China Science & Technology Forum

[Adam WANG SHANGHAI MEGA]

China and Europe show global video leadership level operations. Encrypted quantum communications video conferencing between Austria and China lasted 75 minutes with a total data transfer of 2GB, a world-class game that shakes the global scientific community.

With the help of the world's first quantum satellite Mozi, China sent encrypted information and video to Austria through photons, establishing an unbreakable quantum communications network. This significant development that provides unconditional security of data may change the way global communications networks operate.
https://www.toutiao.com/a6513291335573701127/

中国和欧洲的洲际量子通信试验震动印度学界，评论火啦！
原创 蜀中行讲武堂 2018-01-21 09:02:35

加密量子通讯视频会议

中国与欧洲展示全球视频顶级玩法，印度说自己擅长理论只试验落后。奥地利和中国之间的加密量子通讯视频会议持续了75分钟，总数据传输量为2GB，这一全球顶级玩法震动印度科学界。

中国借助世界上第一颗量子卫星墨子号，将加密的信息和视频通过光子发送到奥地利，建立了牢不可破的量子通信网络。这种为数据提供无条件安全性的重大发展可能会改变通信网络在全球的运作方式。

加密量子通讯视频会议

使用墨子号卫星作为中继，中国已经展示了多个地点之间的洲际量子通信，或成地球最大洲际量子通信间距为7600公里，中国的工作已经构成了一个全球量子通信网络的简单原型。

当时，科学家使用安全量子密钥传送了一幅从北京到维也纳的墨子图片和一幅从维也纳到北京的薛定谔的照片。

洲际量子通信

还通过量子通讯网络于2017年9月29日在中国科学院和奥地利科学院之间举行了洲际视频会议。采用先进的加密标准，每秒刷新种子密钥。奥中视频会议历时75分钟，总数据传输2GB。

为了增加更高效的量子密钥分发（QKD）网络的时间和面积覆盖范围，以潘建伟为首的科学家还发射了更高的轨道卫星，实现了使用电信波长光子和更严格的特殊和光谱滤波的日间操作，使白天进行量子通信也成为可能，以前只能在晚上试验。

量子通信

中国和欧洲的顶级量子通信试验震动印度学界，请看印度科学家们的感叹：

.印度钦奈数学科学研究所光学和量子信息小组的首席科学家Chandrashekar说：“虽然中国这个实验是一个原型，但我认为这将彻底改变现有的通信系统。量子计算机将需要一些时间，但量子通信将成为现实。中国已经开始量子通信研究近15年了，并投入巨资进行量子研究。欧盟已经开始进行研究，并完成了所有的小规模通信活动。“

印度认为，目前世界上量子通信已经开始在美国，欧盟和中国之间的竞赛。印度科学技术部门已经意识到了这一现实，并宣布了“量子技术”研究将成为印度科学界的使命量子，并可能在未来5年内花费高达5亿美元用于量子技术相关的研究。

来自印度北方邦诺伊达的Jaypee信息技术研究所的Anirban Pathak教授，领导了一个专注于量子光学和量子信息的研究小组，这位教授说：“印度科学家非常擅长量子理论并做出贡献，但是我们在实验中落后了，中国的试验是一个重大的发展。逐渐地，人们会去寻求更安全的通信网络。量子通信网络和中国科学家对我们研究的影响以及量子研究人员的发展现在越来越重要。“

他进一步表示，“印度拥有一批与世界上任何人一样优秀的科学家。有些人有足够的能力知道如何建造卫星和有效载荷。我们需要把所有的人才集中到量子技术研究上来配合其他国家。“

印度在量子理论研究领域真的很厉害吗？

量子通信

在二十世纪二三十年代，印度的一些杰出科学家做出了一批让世界物理学界瞩目的成果。

其中玻色、萨哈和拉曼就是他们的代表人物。1924年，玻色这位名不见经传的印度物理学讲师发表了论文《普朗克定律和光量子假说》。在文章中，他批评了普朗克和爱因斯坦等物理学家推导黑体辐射公式的方法，指出在这些方法中普遍存在着量子现象与经典物理概念的逻辑矛盾，并提出了新的推导方法，获得了逻辑一致的量子论结果。

以该文为基础，爱因斯坦连续发表了《单原子理想气体的量子理论》Ⅰ和Ⅱ二篇论文，从而不仅创立了著名的玻色－爱因斯坦量子统计理论，而且预言了物质在一定条件下存在玻色－爱因斯坦凝聚状态（即BEC）。七十余年后，物理学家发现了金属原子气体在低温状态下的玻色－爱因斯坦凝聚现象。目前，这一方向的研究已经成为物理学的前沿领域之一。

玻色作为一位远离西方科学主流社会的东方物理学家，为推动量子理论的发展做出了重要贡献。玻色在印度所接受的是殖民地性质的西方科学教育和印度本土文化的熏陶，其成长道路和所做出的科学工作都是耐人寻味的。可以说，在玻色的身上，即体现了西方科学的精神，也展现了东方传统文化的智慧。在玻色的科学生涯中，爱因斯坦不仅对其科学研究工作给予了热情的帮助，而且又将其原创性思想向前大大发展了一步。这件事已经成为物理学史上即相当感人而又富有启发性的一个典型案例。

玻色由此获得量子统计学的先驱的称号。1928年，玻色被一些物理学家提名推荐诺贝尔物理学奖，但结果并没有如愿。

 

[Three_Kingdoms]

cold lunching satellites 2018 Jun 19
View attachment 448805 View attachment 448806 View attachment 448807 View attachment 448808

"Cold Launching satellites" mission produces so much black smoke??
Problem with the rocket fuel or the engine is not efficient?

NEWS | 18 January 2018
China declared world’s largest producer of scientific articles
Report shows increasing international competition, but suggests that United States remains a scientific powerhouse.

Jeff Tollefson

For the first time, China has overtaken the United States in terms of the total number of science publications, according to statistics compiled by the US National Science Foundation (NSF).

The agency’s report, released on 18 January, documents the United States’ increasing competition from China and other developing countries that are stepping up their investments in science and technology. Nonetheless, the report suggests that the United States remains a scientific powerhouse, pumping out high-profile research, attracting international students and translating science into valuable intellectual property.

“The US continues to be the global leader in science and technology, but the world is changing,” says Maria Zuber, a geophysicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. As other nations increase their output, the United States’ relative share of global science activity is declining, says Zuber, who chairs the National Science Board, which oversees the NSF and produced the report. “We can’t be asleep at the wheel.”

The shifting landscape is already evident in terms of the sheer volume of publications: China published more than 426,000 studies in 2016, or 18.6% of the total documented in Elsevier’s Scopus database. That compares with nearly 409,000 by the United States. India surpassed Japan, and the rest of the developing world continued its upward trend.

But the picture was very different when researchers examined where the most highly cited publications came from. The United States ranked third, below Sweden and Switzerland; the European Union came in fourth and China fifth. The United States still produces the most doctoral graduates in science and technology, and remains the primary destination for international students seeking advanced degrees — although its share of such students fell from 25% in 2000 to 19% in 2014, the report says.

The United States spent the most on research and development (R&D) — around US$500 billion in 2015, or 26% of the global total. China came in second, at roughly $400 billion. But US spending remained flat as a share of the country’s economy, whereas China has increased its R&D spending, proportionally, in recent years.

Credit: National Science Foundation

The NSF analysis, the latest edition of the agency’s biennial Science and Engineering Indicators, comes at a time of heightened concern about the state of US science. It should raise some alarms, says Mark Muro, a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution, a think tank in Washington DC. Trends in US science spending are heading in the wrong direction, he says, and the talent pool of researchers continues to be limited by under-representation of women and minorities. Similarly, key industries such as semiconductors have been hollowed out as businesses ship production work to other countries, Muro adds.

For the first time, the NSF included a section on technology transfer and innovation in its statistical analysis. Data suggest that the United States continues to lead the world when it comes to things like patents, revenue from intellectual property and venture capital funding for innovative technologies. Although more focus is needed at the local and regional level, Muro says, the report nonetheless provides important data about the value of scientific innovation.

“A nation’s innovation capacity is one of the main drivers of productivity growth and so prosperity,” Muro says. The new data provide “a useful reminder of why we care about these indicators in the first place.”

China declared world’s largest producer of scientific articles | Nature

We are lagging far behind EU and USA in Bio-Medical science (second chart)

 

[JSCh]

Machine Learning Method to Locate Unseen Sources in Deep Water
Jan 19, 2018

As a data-driven source localization method, machine learning begins to draw the attention among ocean acoustic community.

Based on previous research on machine learning for source localization published in The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, researcher NIU Haiqiang from the Institute of Acoustics (IOA) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and his colleagues from the USA applied the machine learning classifiers to the ship localization in Santa Barbara Channel off the west coast of California.

They demonstrated that with limited environmental information, machine learning classifiers could produce reasonable range estimates at longer ranges than conventional matched field processing (MFP).

The experiment was conducted in Santa Barbara Channel with water depth 540-600m in 2016. Moreover, three randomly selected transiting ships with varying speed were used as underwater sources.

The hydrophone array consisting of 28 sensors (77 m aperture) recorded noise from ships exiting or entering Los Angeles harbor. Data from three ship tracks during different periods were used to form training and test data sets. The corresponding spectrograms recorded on the top hydrophone are shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Spectrograms of shipping noise at the top hydrophone during three periods. (Image by NIU Haiqiang)

Researchers investigated two frequency bands (53-200 Hz and 203-350 Hz) and compared range predictions on the two test data sets between using conventional MFP and using machine learning classifiers. As a result, machine learning classifiers outperformed conventional MFP and were more robust to low signal noise ratio at ranges greater than 4 km.

It is demonstrated that machine learning classifier methods could generate reasonable range predictions without knowledge of the ocean environment, even when the data are from different sources with different moving speeds.

Their study was published in The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

The research was supported by the Office of Naval Research, the China scholarship Council, and the National Natural Science Foundation of China.



Machine Learning Method to Locate Unseen Sources in Deep Water---Chinese Academy of Sciences

 

[yusheng]

"Cold Launching satellites" mission produces so much black smoke??
Problem with the rocket fuel or the engine is not efficient?

Cold launch, means that the main, high-temperature rocket motor does not fire until the missile is outside its launcher. Rocket ignition needs to be delayed long enough so it is of no danger to the launcher system, and there is no backblast if it is fired from a closed room.

The technique is a practical necessity for a rocket with Solid propellant rocket engine and sealed in a closed launcher, where the hot exhaust of a rocket motor could be catastrophic when the rocket is still in the launcher.

the cold launch method needs more extensive piping for the ejection system and a more complex firing system, Energy for the cold launch ejection comes from a compressed gas cylinder, or a pyrotechnic gas generator whose exhaust is of low temperature.

cz11 is from DF31, which has solid propellant rocket engine and sealed in a launcher system when transporting. so when you have a satellite to launch, the rocket is always ready, the only time needed is to install the satellite and check the system, then launch it at any location.

the black smoke you see is the low temperture gas which send the rocket out of the jacket.

 

[JSCh]

Public Release: 23-Jan-2018
A new family of aerodynamic configurations of hypersonic airplanes
Science China Press

​

This is a principle test model (left) and an artist concept for future applications (right) of HIACs. ©Science China Press

Hypersonic vehicles, which flight at Mach numbers lager than five (flight velocity more than 6000 km/h), will serve as a more convenient and efficient transport tool than present subsonic airplanes for long-distance journeys in future. Typically, it only takes a couple of hours from Beijing to New York. Recent interest in these vehicles has grown intensively, and various types of innovative designs have been proposed and studied.

Despite entering the age of hypersonic flight, there still exist many problems to resolve. How to design an advanced aerodynamic configuration is one of them. Prof. Kai Cui, Dr. Yao Xiao, Dr. Ying-Zhou Xu, and Dr. Guang-Li Li from State Key Laboratory of High Temperature Gas Dynamics, Institute of Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences tried to tackle this problem in a long time. After more than seven years investigation, they first proposed a family of innovative configurations named "Hypersonic I-shaped Aerodynamic Configurations". Their work was published as the cover article of SCIENCE CHINA Physics, Mechanics & Astronomy (2018, 61(2), 024722).

In general, there are at least three objectives in designing an aerodynamic configuration, the high lift to drag ratio (L/D), the high volumetric efficiency and the high lift coefficient. Designers always take the high L/D during the cruise state as the primary goal because the flight range is linearly proportional to the L/D according to the famous Breguet's equation. In addition, a vehicle should provide sufficient space to contain equipments, passengers and cargoes as many as possible. Furthermore, the aerodynamic lift coefficient should be enhanced in whatever way possible. This is because a vehicle with high lift may elevate the vehicle to a high altitude where the aero-thermal environment is efficiently improved owing to the low atmosphere density.

Unfortunately, it is difficult to obtain a high L/D for a generic configuration due to the presence of strong shock wave drag and massive viscosity in the hypersonic regime. Moreover, there exist strong contradictions among the L/D, the volumetric efficiency and the lift coefficient. Among the existing configurations, the waverider has been deemed the most promising because the containment of flow beneath the vehicle results in a high pressure being exerted on the lower surface. Yet a pure waverider with high L/D is always too thin to provide enough volume for fuel and payloads. Typically, the volumetric efficiency of the viscous optimized waverider is lower than 0.12. Although the freestream upper surface of a pure waverider can be morphed to an upwarp to enlarge the volume, but this canopy actually forms a compression surface on the upper part of the vehicle, which leads to an increase in both the aerodynamic drag and the negative lift, causing an overall reduction in L/D.

To aim at enhancing the aerodynamic performance of hypersonic aircraft with large volume requirements, a new concept that called high-pressure capturing wing (HCW) was first proposed by Kai Cui et al. Unlike generic configurations, an extra wing called the HCW is attached to the top of an upwarp airframe. Based on the shock wave compression theory, the high-pressure airflow compressed by the upper surface of the vehicle acts on the HCW when it flies in the hypersonic regime. Therefore, the aerodynamic lift significantly augments on the vehicle with only a small increase in drag, producing a correspondingly high increase in its L/D. Furthermore, such a concept particularly fits for vehicles with large volumes because the lift produced by the HCW increases with the increase of the compression angle in the upwarp.

Expanding on the philosophy of HCWs, a family of novel configurations is proposed in this letter. There are two lift surfaces in this configuration. The lower surface is a common compression surface, while the upper one is designed according to the idea of HCWs. The parts between the two wings are the airframe and the attachment struts. Because the cross-section of the configuration appears like the letter "I", it is thus named "Hypersonic I-shaped Aerodynamic Configuration (HIAC)".

In order to validate the advantages of HIACs, a test model with the volumetric efficiency 0.175 was generated as a typical example. Moreover, the leading edge profiles of both the low wing and the HCW were optimized by combined using the computational fluid dynamics, the design of experiments method, the surrogate models method, and the genetic algorithm. Subsequently, a numerical simulation work was carried out to evaluate the aerodynamic performances of the model. The results show that both the L/D and the lift coefficient drastically improve benefiting from the innovative configuration. The maximal L/D values at Mach number 5 to 7 are more than 4.5, while the increased percentages of corresponding values of the lift coefficient are about 60% comparing with generic configurations.

In the present study, only the profiles of the leading edges were taken as design variables of the optimization. The aerodynamic performances of the configuration may be further enhanced if the surface shape of the HCW is considered as optimization variables. The authors believe their present study will promote further research in the aerodynamic design of high-speed configurations, which may ultimately offer a new candidate for hypersonic flight vehicles.

###​

See the article: K. Cui, Y. Xiao, Y. Z. Xu, G. L. Li, "Hypersonic I-shaped aerodynamic configurations" SCIENCE CHINA Physics, Mechanics & Astronomy 61(2), 024722(2018); doi: 10.1007/s11433-017-9117-8

http://engine.scichina.com/publisher/scp/journal/SCPMA/61/2/10.1007/s11433-017-9117-8?slug=full text https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11433-017-9117-8
​

A new family of aerodynamic configurations of hypersonic airplanes | EurekAlert! Science News

 

[JSCh]

Rooster Year in Review: Faces of China's science and technology
By Gong Zhe
2018-01-23 23:14 GMT+8

Last year on China's lunar calendar, the Year of Rooster has witnessed the achievements of some of the greatest scientists and innovators in the country.

We have collected 10 of them in Sunday's review. And now we are shifting from achievements to the people behind them.

Pan Jianwei: Unhackable communication

CGTN has covered extensively China's quantum network, which is totally safe from hacking because it utilizes basic physics laws to operate.

Pan Jianwei is the leading contributor to the project. He learned the laws from his teacher, Austrian quantum physicist Anton Zeilinger.

Pan Jianwei. /Web Photo

In October 2017, the two scientists talked through the network they built.

Wang Zeshan and Hou Yunde: The highest honor

Hou Yunde (L) and Wang Zeshan. /Web Photo

Wang and Hou won China's top science award of 2017, each receiving 500 million yuan (about 781,000 US dollars) presented by Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Wang, nicknamed "king of gunpowder," is an engineering academician who boosted the shooting range of China's artillery by 20 percent.

Hou is a virologist who sees viruses as the arch-enemy and fights them through research. Other virologists like to call him the "father of China's Interferon."

Xu Ying: My system is better than the GPS

Xu Ying is the youngest in this year's list. She is a major developer of China's Beidou satellite navigation system.

She does not like people calling Beidou "the Chinese GPS" because she thinks her project is better.

At her age of 34, Xu won great reputation online for her passion in advocating science. Her photos circulated a lot among Chinese netizens, who called her "the Beidou goddess."

Xu Ying. /Web Photo‍

Remember Nan Rendong: The man behind world's largest telescope

China in 2016 built the world's largest telescope FAST – the five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope. It's as large as 30 football fields and able to "see" as far as 13.7 billion light years from the Earth through radio wave detection.

Nan was the creator of the whole project, and has spent most of his career building the telescope.

Nan is included in the list mainly for remembrance; he passed away in September 2017.

Nan Rendong. /Web Photo

There are so many more people who made great contributions to China's sci-tech but we can't list all. They include the Chen brothers who crafted the world's first deep-learning chip "Cambricon", which powers the AI camera in Huawei smartphones. Also, Su Quanke laid out a solid plan to build the bridge that links Hong Kong, Zhuhai and Macao.

Stay tuned to CGTN to find more and more excellent Chinese innovators that change the country and even the world.

 

[JSCh]

First cloned monkeys born in China
(People's Daily) 07:30, January 25, 2018

Two cloned macaques named Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua are held by a nurse at the non-human-primate research facility under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in Suzhou, east China's Jiangsu province, Jan. 22, 2018. China on Thursday announced it successfully cloned world's first macaques from somatic cells by method that made Dolly. (Xinhua/Jin Liwang)

Beijing (People's Daily) – Researchers in China officially made history on Wednesday when it was announced they had successfully cloned two monkeys.

Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua, both female monkeys, were cloned from fetal fibroblasts, a cell found in connective tissue.

The cloning method involves removing the nucleus from a donor egg cell and replacing it with one taken out of a cell from another animal.

Somatic cells are a concept relative to germ cells. It is a type of cell whose genetic information does not pass to the next generation like germ cells.

Zhong Zhong was born on November 27, and Hua Hua was born on Christmas Day.

Both monkeys are in good health under the watchful eyes of a research team that has been working on the clone project for five years.

File photo provided by the Chinese Academy of Sciences shows two cloned macaques named Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua at the non-human-primate research facility under the Chinese Academy of Sciences. China on Thursday announced it successfully cloned world's first macaques from somatic cells by method that made Dolly. (Xinhua)

Research team leader, Sun Qiang, at the Institute of Neuroscience and Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shanghai.

Since “Dolly’ was cloned in Scotland in 1996, scientists have successfully used SCNT to clone more than 20 other species, including cows, pigs, dogs, rabbits, rats and mice.

But cloning primates had always remained elusive.

The Chinese team succeeded by using modulators to switch on or off certain genes that were inhibiting embryo development.

“After this technology matures, the future, China can also be built to nonhuman primates as a model of the main research and development base and industrial chain,” said scientist Pu Muming.

#####
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Zhen Liu, Yijun Cai, Yan Wang, Yanhong Nie, Chenchen Zhang, Yuting Xu, Xiaotong Zhang, Yong Lu, Zhanyang Wang, Muming Poo, and Qiang Sun. Cloning of Macaque Monkeys by Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer. Cell, 2018. 172, 1–7. DOI:10.1016/j.cell.2018.01.020​

Also,

These monkey twins are the first primate clones made by the method that developed Dolly | Science | AAAS

First monkeys cloned with technique that made Dolly the sheep | Nature

 

[JSCh]

Scientists Create a 3-D Model Of Molecules in Yeast Linked to Enzyme that Lengthens Chromosome Tips
Release Date: January 24, 2018

Share Fast Facts

• Biologists create three-dimensional models—at the atomic level—of the inner workings of cells. - Click to Tweet
• The beauty of science in 3D - Click to Tweet

Through the haze of a sonogram screen, an expectant mother catches a glimpse of the growing baby within her. The outline of a nose, chin and head, instantly recognizable as a tiny human, brings to life what parents, until then, could only imagine. Biologists, too, aim to bring their scientific discoveries to life by creating three-dimensional models—at the atomic level—of the inner workings of cells.

“We need atomic-resolution 3-D images of molecular structures for many reasons. For example, these images can show us precisely how interacting molecules bind to each other in order to carry out critical cellular functions. This helps us develop therapeutic drugs that control the interactions, and therefore also the biochemical processes that they perform in cells,” says David Zappulla, Ph.D., a researcher in the department of molecular biology and genetics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Zappulla’s research focuses on an enzyme found in cells, called telomerase, which lengthens repetitive bits of DNA at the end of chromosomes. These end-caps, called telomeres, erode each time a cell divides, and without these protective tips, this erosion would chip away at the chromosomes—including crucial genetic information—and kill the cell.

Telomerase is present in fetal cells to keep DNA from getting too clipped as cells multiply rapidly during early development, but then the enzyme is turned off, and telomeres erode over time, as part of the natural aging process of cells. It’s well-known that older people tend to have shorter telomeres than younger people.

Cancer cells, on the other hand, hijack telomerase and re-express it to maintain telomere length, making them impervious to aging-related death. To kill cancer cells, scientists have long sought drugs that target telomerase’s ability to keep cells alive.

But to develop such drugs, scientists need a better understanding of how telomerase gets to and extends the chromosomes’ ends.

“There appear to be multiple regulatory steps that precisely control telomerase and recruit it to the shortest chromosome ends where and when it’s needed,” says Zappulla, who has worked to reveal these processes. He published research in 2015 showing how two proteins, Ku and Sir4, interact to lure telomerase near the tips of yeast chromosomes.

In experiments looking at telomerase in baker’s yeast, his lab showed that the Ku protein helps telomerase sense when a telomere is short. They showed that Ku binds to another protein, Sir4, and this connection is important for telomere lengthening. He believes that Sir4 acts as a landing pad to attract telomerase preferentially to short chromosome tips that need an extension.

To visualize these concepts in 3-D, Zappulla teamed up with Ming Lei, Ph.D., an expert in creating crystal structures, at the Shanghai Jiao Tong University. The two met during their postdoctoral training at the University of Colorado Boulder.

For the current research, published Jan. 11 in Cell, Lei’s team crystallized the baker’s yeast versions of key telomerase-recruiting proteins, as well as a piece of the telomerase enzyme’s RNA. Then they shot X-rays through the crystals and inferred the 3-D shape of each molecule based on how the X-rays’ paths are redirected. Then several co-teams collaborated to validate the structures by introducing mutations in the genes encoding the proteins and testing the altered molecules’ functions in live yeast cells. These experiments led to new insights into how telomerase-recruiting proteins work and interrelate in time and space.

“It’s amazing how much precise detail you can get from crystallography studies,” says Zappulla.

When Zappulla first saw the results, he says that they immediately answered one of his questions about how telomerase interacted with Ku and Sir4 to attach to the chromosome end. “The crystal structures show how Ku binds to both the RNA in telomerase and the Sir4 protein on the chromosomes, as we had proposed in our 2015 study.”

Zappulla says that yeast telomerase and the way it works will certainly be different than the human version; however, insights from yeast should help scientists understand fundamental molecular and cellular features that are similar or even have been conserved over evolution.

Zappulla works in the department of molecular biology and genetics at Johns Hopkins, which is led by Carol Greider, Ph.D., who discovered telomerase in 1984 and shares the 2009 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Elizabeth Blackburn and Jack W. Szostak for the finding.

Additional scientists involved in the research include Hongwen Chen, Jing Xue, Jian Wu and Shaohua Shi of the Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine; Dmitri Churikov, Pierre Luciano and Vincent Geli of the Marseille Cancer Research Center; Evan P. Hass of the Johns Hopkins University; Laramie D. Lemon and Alison A. Bertuch of the Baylor College of Medicine.

The current research was supported by grants from the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (2013CB910402), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31330040, 31525007, 31500625 and U1732124), the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDB08010201), the Youth Innovation Promotion Association of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of General Medical Sciences (RO1GM118757 and RO1GM077509).



Scientists Create a 3-D Model Of Molecules in Yeast Linked to Enzyme that Lengthens Chromosome Tips | Johns Hopkins Medicine

Hongwen Chen, Jing Xue, Dmitri Churikov, Evan P. Hass, Shaohua Shi, Laramie D. Lemon, Pierre Luciano, Alison A. Bertuch, David C. Zappulla, Vincent Géli, Jian Wu, Ming Lei. Structural Insights into Yeast Telomerase Recruitment to Telomeres. Cell, 2018; 172 (1-2): 331 DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2017.12.008​

 

[JSCh]

A laser in Shanghai, China, has set power records yet fits on tabletops.

KAN ZHAN​

Physicists are planning to build lasers so powerful they could rip apart empty space
By Edwin Cartlidge
Jan. 24, 2018 , 9:00 AM

Inside a cramped laboratory in Shanghai, China, physicist Ruxin Li and colleagues are breaking records with the most powerful pulses of light the world has ever seen. At the heart of their laser, called the Shanghai Superintense Ultrafast Laser Facility (SULF), is a single cylinder of titanium-doped sapphire about the width of a Frisbee. After kindling light in the crystal and shunting it through a system of lenses and mirrors, the SULF distills it into pulses of mind-boggling power. In 2016, it achieved an unprecedented 5.3 million billion watts, or petawatts (PW). The lights in Shanghai do not dim each time the laser fires, however. Although the pulses are extraordinarily powerful, they are also infinitesimally brief, lasting less than a trillionth of a second. The researchers are now upgrading their laser and hope to beat their own record by the end of this year with a 10-PW shot, which would pack more than 1000 times the power of all the world's electrical grids combined.

The group's ambitions don't end there. This year, Li and colleagues intend to start building a 100-PW laser known as the Station of Extreme Light (SEL). By 2023, it could be flinging pulses into a chamber 20 meters underground, subjecting targets to extremes of temperature and pressure not normally found on Earth, a boon to astrophysicists and materials scientists alike. The laser could also power demonstrations of a new way to accelerate particles for use in medicine and high-energy physics. But most alluring, Li says, would be showing that light could tear electrons and their antimatter counterparts, positrons, from empty space—a phenomenon known as "breaking the vacuum." It would be a striking illustration that matter and energy are interchangeable, as Albert Einstein's famous E=mc2 equation states. Although nuclear weapons attest to the conversion of matter into immense amounts of heat and light, doing the reverse is not so easy. But Li says the SEL is up to the task. "That would be very exciting," he says. "It would mean you could generate something from nothing."

The Chinese group is "definitely leading the way" to 100 PW, says Philip Bucksbaum, an atomic physicist at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. But there is plenty of competition. In the next few years, 10-PW devices should switch on in Romania and the Czech Republic as part of Europe's Extreme Light Infrastructure, although the project recently put off its goal of building a 100-PW-scale device. Physicists in Russia have drawn up a design for a 180-PW laser known as the Exawatt Center for Extreme Light Studies (XCELS), while Japanese researchers have put forward proposals for a 30-PW device.


Continue -> Physicists are planning to build lasers so powerful they could rip apart empty space | Science | AAAS

 

[JSCh]

Synopsis: A Clearer View of the Atomic World
January 25, 2018
A new technique uses electric repulsion to compress electron beams that probe molecular processes.

C. Lu et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. (2018)

Ultracompact bunches of electrons are an essential tool for deducing the atomic structure of a material and for capturing the rapid motion of the material’s atoms. But when millions of electrons are crammed together into a bunch, they repel one another. This repulsion increases the width of the electron bunch, reducing the spatial and temporal resolutions with which the tool can operate. Now researchers have found a way to capitalize on electron repulsion, using the repulsion between electrons in one bunch to compress those in another. Their approach could create electron beams with shorter electron bunches, enabling researchers to study molecular processes that occur on time scales currently too fast to capture, such as proton transfer or the oscillations of molecules made of lightweight atoms.

The idea of Dao Xiang, of the Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and colleagues is to constrain the electrons within a given bunch via the repulsive interactions between it and its two neighboring bunches. The electric repulsion from the leading and trailing bunches compresses the central “probe” bunch, preventing the electrons it contains from flying apart. Using this approach, the team squished the probe bunch laterally by about a factor of 3, increasing the technique’s spatial and temporal resolution threefold. They also eliminated variations in the arrival times of bunches—so-called timing jitter—introduced in other beam compression methods, further improving resolution. This narrower bunch was not quite as small as the shortest bunches in some other experiments, but the improvement demonstrates the potential of the new technique.

The team says that future optimization of the experimental parameters could enable researchers to generate electron bunches with both a pulse width and a timing jitter shorter than 50 fs, the state-of-the-art in this field.

This research is published in Physical Review Letters.

https://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.120.044801
Coulomb-Driven Relativistic Electron Beam Compression
Chao Lu, Tao Jiang, Shengguang Liu, Rui Wang, Lingrong Zhao, Pengfei Zhu, Dao Xiang, and Jie Zhang
Phys. Rev. Lett. 120, 044801 (2018)
Published January 25, 2018
​

–Christopher Crockett



Physics - Synopsis: A Clearer View of the Atomic World

 

[Three_Kingdoms]

Cold launch, means that the main, high-temperature rocket motor does not fire until the missile is outside its launcher. Rocket ignition needs to be delayed long enough so it is of no danger to the launcher system, and there is no backblast if it is fired from a closed room.

The technique is a practical necessity for a rocket with Solid propellant rocket engine and sealed in a closed launcher, where the hot exhaust of a rocket motor could be catastrophic when the rocket is still in the launcher.

the cold launch method needs more extensive piping for the ejection system and a more complex firing system, Energy for the cold launch ejection comes from a compressed gas cylinder, or a pyrotechnic gas generator whose exhaust is of low temperature.

View attachment 449240
cz11 is from DF31, which has solid propellant rocket engine and sealed in a launcher system when transporting. so when you have a satellite to launch, the rocket is always ready, the only time needed is to install the satellite and check the system, then launch it at any location.

the black smoke you see is the low temperture gas which send the rocket out of the jacket.
View attachment 449239

Thanks buddy for the explanation.
Cold launch techniques are also used in our JL1 and 2 SLBMs, I guess.

 

[cirr]

Hyperunified field theory and gravitational gauge–geometry duality

The European Physical Journal C, Jan 2018

Yue-Liang Wu

A hyperunified field theory is built in detail based on the postulates of gauge invariance and coordinate independence along with the conformal scaling symmetry. All elementary particles are merged into a single hyper-spinor field and all basic forces are unified into a fundamental interaction governed by the hyper-spin gauge symmetry SP(1, \(D_h-1\)). The dimension \(D_h\) of hyper-spacetime is conjectured to have a physical origin in correlation with the hyper-spin charge of elementary particles. The hyper-gravifield fiber bundle structure of biframe hyper-spacetime appears naturally with the globally flat Minkowski hyper-spacetime as a base spacetime and the locally flat hyper-gravifield spacetime as a fiber that is viewed as a dynamically emerged hyper-spacetime characterized by a non-commutative geometry. The gravitational origin of gauge symmetry is revealed with the hyper-gravifield that plays an essential role as a Goldstone-like field. The gauge–gravity and gravity–geometry correspondences bring about the gravitational gauge–geometry duality. The basic properties of hyperunified field theory and the issue on the fundamental scale are analyzed within the framework of quantum field theory, which allows us to describe the laws of nature in deriving the gauge gravitational equation with the conserved current and the geometric gravitational equations of Einstein-like type and beyond.

Full article for the really seriously scientifically minded:

http://paperity.org/p/85949014/hyperunified-field-theory-and-gravitational-gauge-geometry-duality

@Bussard Ramjet

 

[JSCh]

China to build world's most powerful hyper-gravity centrifuges
Source: Xinhua| 2018-01-31 18:46:18|Editor: Mengjie



HANGZHOU, Jan. 31 (Xinhua) -- China plans to build two centrifuges for hyper-gravity experiments that, when completed, will become the world's largest by capacity, scientists said Wednesday.

The centrifuges are designed to each have a capacity of at least 1,500 gravity tons (gt), compared with the 1,200-gt centrifuge developed by U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the world's most powerful to date.

The project is expected to be completed in five years, with funding of more than 2 billion yuan (about 303 million U.S. dollars).

The project, planned to be located in China's eastern city of Hangzhou, will be spearheaded by Chen Yunmin, an engineering professor with Zhejiang University. He is also an academician at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, one of China's top think tanks.

One of the planned centrifuges will give researchers access to a range of hyper-gravity up to 1,500 times of Earth gravity and the other up to 600 times.

The development of the new machines will be based on a two-arm, 9-meter-diameter centrifuge that has been in operation at Zhejiang University.

Along with the two hyper-gravity centrifuges, Chen's team will also develop six hyper-gravity labs and other supporting equipment.

Chen said he aims to develop the facility into a multifunctional platform for interdisciplinary hyper-gravity experiments.

"The centrifuges will provide strong support to research in areas such as underground and deep-sea exploration, disaster control, waste disposal, and new material manufacturing," said Chen.

Hyper-gravity will enable scientists to simulate a deep-sea environment thousands of meters below the sea level, in which they can easily test the mining of natural gas hydrate, or combustible ice, Chen said.

 

[JSCh]

China develops female radiation virtual human
Source: Xinhua| 2018-01-31 18:31:11|Editor: Mengjie


BEIJING, Jan. 31 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists have constructed a whole-body female radiation virtual human called Rad-Human and a complete radiation dose database with Chinese anatomical body characteristics.

The database was built on two-dimensional sliced images of a human body, according to the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

The Rad-Human, consisting of 28.8 billion voxels, is a radiation virtual human with the best accuracy of the Chinese female.

It has been applied to radiology therapy, and will be put in use in nuclear power, aviation, and aerospace.

Virtual humans help in avoiding radiation hazard during dose assessment.

Previously, the virtual human recommended by the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) came from Caucasians. Its anatomical differences with Chinese people can significantly affect Chinese people's dose assessment.

 

[Adam WANG SHANGHAI MEGA]

Chinese Academy of Sciences developed the world's strongest deuterium tritium neutron source

中科院研发出世界最强氘氚中子源
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2018-02-01 16:01:16字号：A- A A+来源：科技日报
关键字:强流氘氚中子源强流氘氚中子源中科院中科院强流氘氚中子源
核能是20世纪人类最伟大的成就之一。中子被称为核能系统的“灵魂”，是反应堆中核反应的触发粒子和能量载体，也是产生核热能和引发放射性的源头。中子源是产生、研究、利用中子的必备科学装置，也是开展中子物理与辐射安全、先进核能系统关键技术及核技术交叉应用等研究的重要实验平台。

据《科技日报》2月1日报道，日前，中科院核能安全技术研究所FDS凤麟核能团队的科研人员，在中子输运物理与技术方面取得突破性创新研究成果。该团队研发出强流氘氚中子源实验装置HINEG，其中子源强度创现行同类装置中的世界第一。那么，这个“世界最强氘氚中子源”究竟强在哪呢？

HINEG-I离子注入系统（图：中科院）

超强中子靶，承受的热流密度是太阳表面的3倍

“中子靶是HINEG的核心系统之一，强流离子加速器产生的高功率氘离子束轰击含有氚的中子靶，在靶上发生氘氚聚变反应产生中子。”中科院核能安全技术研究所所长、FDS凤麟核能团队创建人吴宜灿研究员告诉科技日报记者。为了产生强流的中子束，靶需要承受高功率离子束的轰击，从而带来靶上高强热流散出的难题。

“HINEG中子靶承受的热流密度是太阳表面热流密度的3倍。如果散热问题解决不好，靶温度迅速升高，其内含有的氚会快速释放，就无法实现中子的持续稳定产生。靶温升高过快时，甚至会出现瞬间被熔穿烧毁的情形。”吴宜灿说。

针对中子靶的高效散热难题，FDS凤麟核能团队发明了阵列射流耦合强剪切场的高效散热技术，并通过反复验证测试，成功实现了高效散热，将靶的温度控制在200℃以内。

不带电的中子也能做到精准调控

氘氚聚变反应产生14兆电伏（MeV）的单能中子，为模拟再现先进核能系统的复杂中子能谱环境，需要对产生的单能中子进行精确调控以便开展各类实验研究，这无疑是另一项严峻挑战。

“我们知道，电子、质子是带电粒子，可以利用电场或磁场对这些带电粒子进行控制，但中子是不带电的，无法用电磁场对其进行调控，不过可以通过中子与特定材料中原子核的反应过程来进行调控，这就需要精确的理论方法与实验技术来实现。”吴宜灿告诉记者。

FDS凤麟核能团队以中子输运理论研究成果为基础，发明了中子输运精准调控关键技术，实现了先进核能系统的复杂中子能谱环境的准确再现，对先进核能系统研究具有重要意义。

核能及核技术交叉应用研究的重要平台

与传统核反应堆相比，先进核能系统可极大提高资源利用率，并降低核废料的产生。HINEG可以真实再现多种类型先进核能系统的复杂中子能谱环境，开展理论与程序验证、核数据测量与验证、反应堆部件核性能验证等实验研究。

中子照相是一种检测物质内部微细结构的“显微探测”技术，它利用中子在不同物质中穿透能力的差异来洞察物体内部结构，在检测含氢材料、重金属组件结构、放射性材料等方面弥补了X光等其他无损检测技术的不足。HINEG产生的强流中子束可用于开展高精度的无损检测，服务于我国航空航天等领域的快速发展。

中子治癌是目前正在快速发展的癌症治疗方法，该方法是一种身具固有安全性的生物靶向放射治疗模式，对患者正常组织损伤小，可有效提高患者的生命质量，开创了人类攻克恶性肿瘤的新途径。有国际著名专家表示，在癌症领域，20世纪可以说是X射线的世纪，而21世纪将是中子治疗的世纪。HINEG可作为中子治癌技术研究的重要平台，可促进我国在中子治癌领域的发展。

（本报记者 吴长锋）
Chinese Academy of Sciences developed the world's strongest deuterium tritium neutron source
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Source: Science and Technology Daily
Keywords: strong flow deuterium tritium neutron source strong flow deuterium tritium neutron source Chinese Academy of Sciences CAS strong deuterium tritium neutron source
Nuclear energy is one of the greatest achievements of mankind in the 20th century. Known as the "soul" of the nuclear energy system, neutron is the trigger particle and energy carrier of the nuclear reaction in the reactor. It is also the source of generating nuclear thermal energy and initiating radioactivity. The neutron source is an indispensable scientific device for generating, researching and utilizing neutron. It is also an important experiment platform for carrying out research on neutron physics and radiation safety, key technologies of advanced nuclear energy system and cross-application of nuclear technology.
According to "Science and Technology Daily" reported February 1, a few days ago, Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Nuclear Energy Safety FDS Fenglin nuclear team of researchers, made a breakthrough innovation in neutron transport physics and technology research results. The team developed HINEG, a high-flow deuterium-tritium neutron source experimental unit that ranks first in the world for its class of sub-source intensities. So, this "world's strongest deuterium tritium neutron source" what is strong in what?

HINEG-I ion implantation system (Figure: Chinese Academy of Sciences)
Super-neutron targets withstand three times the heat flux of the sun's surface
"The neutron target is one of the core HINEG systems. The high-power deuterium ion beam generated by a high-flux accelerator bombard the neutron target with tritium and generate fusion of deuterium, tritium and neutrons on the target." Institute of Nuclear Energy Safety, Chinese Academy of Sciences Director, FDS Fenglin Nuclear Energy Team founder Wu Yican researcher told science daily reporter. In order to generate a strong stream of neutron beams, the target needs to withstand the bombardment of high-power ion beams, resulting in the problem of high heat flux shedding on the target.
"HINEG neutron targets are exposed to three times the heat flux density of the sun.If the heat problem is not well solved and the target temperature rises rapidly, the tritium contained in the target will quickly release and the neutron generation will not be sustained. When the target temperature rises too fast, there may even be an instantaneous situation of being burned through. "
For the efficient heat dissipation problem of neutron targets, FDS Fenglin Nuclear Energy Team invented the highly efficient cooling technology of array jet coupled with strong shear field, and succeeded in achieving efficient heat dissipation by repeatedly verifying and testing the target temperature below 200 ℃.
Uncharged neutrons can also be precise control
The fusion reaction of deuterium and tritium generates a single energy neutron of 14 MeV. To simulate the complex neutron energy spectrum environment of the advanced nuclear energy system, the single energy neutron generated needs to be precisely regulated to carry out various experimental studies. This is undoubtedly another serious challenge.
"We know that electrons and protons are charged particles that can be controlled by an electric or magnetic field. However, neutrons are uncharged and can not be controlled by electromagnetic fields, but they can pass through the nuclei of neutron-specific nuclei Reaction process to regulate, which requires accurate theoretical methods and experimental techniques to achieve. "Wu Yi-tsan told reporters.
Based on the research results of neutron transport theory, FDS Fenglin Nuclear Energy Team invented the key technology of precise control of neutron transport and realized accurate reproduction of complex neutron energy spectrum environment of advanced nuclear energy system, which is important for the research of advanced nuclear energy system significance.
Nuclear and nuclear technology application of cross-cutting an important platform
Compared with traditional nuclear reactors, advanced nuclear energy systems can greatly improve resource utilization and reduce the generation of nuclear waste. HINEG can truly reproduce the complex neutron spectrum environment of many types of advanced nuclear energy systems, carry out experimental and theoretical studies on program verification, verification and verification of nuclear data, and nuclear performance verification of reactor components.
Neutron photography is a kind of "microscopic detection" technology which detects the fine structure inside the material. It uses the difference of penetrating ability of neutrons in different materials to understand the internal structure of the object. In the detection of hydrogen-containing materials, structure of heavy metal components, radioactive materials And other areas to make up for X-ray and other non-destructive testing techniques. HINEG generated strong current neutron beam can be used to carry out high-precision non-destructive testing, serving the rapid development of China's aerospace and other fields.
Neutron cancer is currently the rapid development of cancer treatment methods, the method is an inherently safe biological targeting radiotherapy mode, the patient's normal tissue damage is small, which can effectively improve the quality of life of patients, creating a human A new way to overcome malignant tumors. There are internationally renowned experts said that in the field of cancer, the 20th century can be said that X-ray century, and the 21st century will be the century of neutron therapy. HINEG can be used as an important platform for neutron cancer research and can promote the development of neutron cancer in our country.
(Reporter Wu Chang-feng)