China Science & Technology Forum

[JSCh]

Department of Nuclear and Particle Physics, University of Geneva
Artist’s impression of DAMPE, the first of four purely scientific Chinese space missions. ​

China launches satellite to join the hunt for dark matter

• By Dennis Normile
• 17 December 2015 5:00 am

SHANGHAI-China's space science efforts got a boost today with the launch of the first of 4 planned scientific missions. The Dark Matter Particle Explorer (DAMPE) rode into space on a Long March 2-D rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi desert, about 1600 kilometers west of Beijing, at about 8:12 a.m. local time.

"This is an exciting mission," says theoretical astrophysicist David Spergel of Princeton University. If dark matter annihilates, as some theories predict, "DAMPE has an opportunity to detect dark matter annihilation products," Spergel says. The launch also marks China’s new commitment to scientific space missions. "DAMPE is the first Chinese space mission for astronomy and astrophysics," says Yizhong Fan, an astrophysicist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Purple Mountain Observatory in Nanjing who is one of the mission scientists.

Dark matter is believed to make up most of the matter in the universe. But it has never been detected directly; its existence is inferred from observed gravitational effects on visible matter and the structure of the universe. DAMPE is designed to observe the incoming direction, energy and electric charge of extremely high-energy photons and electrons that result when dark matter candidate particles called Weekly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) annihilate. The satellite's payload is made up of a stack of thin criss-crossed strip detectors tuned to catch signals created by photons and electrons as well as gamma rays and cosmic rays.

"We are, of course, confident that DAMPE will contribute to the dark matter search," says Philipp Azzarello, a University of Geneva astrophysicist who collaborated in the design of DAMPE’s detector. Azzarello says the satellite improves on the energy range and resolution of previous space-based dark matter experiments. "The project is starting at an exciting time of intense searches for dark matter," agrees Vitaly Kudryavtsev, a particle physicist at the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom who is also searching for dark matter. He says DAMPE will complement other space-based detectors as well as underground laboratories seeking to detect WIMPS directly.

The DAMPE collaboration comprises four institutes under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), including the National Space Science Center in Beijing; also involved are the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, the University of Geneva in Switzerland, and Italian universities in Bari, Lecce, and Perugia. The satellite has been named Wukong, after the Monkey King character in the 16th century Chinese novel Journey to the West. It will enter a sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of 500 kilometers. Fan says everything is going as planned but that it will take several days to confirm that all systems are working properly. Calibration of the DAMPE detector will then take about two months. "Scientific observations may start in February, 2016," Fan says.

DAMPE is the first of four purely scientific satellites that add a new dimension to China's space efforts, which until now were strongly focussed on engineering and applications. The Chang’e-3 lunar lander, launched in December 2013, investigated the moon’s surface topography and soil composition. And there were two previous scientific missions: the Geospace Double Star Exploration Program, developed with the European Space Agency and launched in 2004 to study Earth's magnetosphere; and a Mars probe, Yinghuo-1, launched on a Russian rocket in 2011, that failed to exit an Earth orbit.

But CAS’s 2011 Strategic Pioneer Program on Space Science has put research missions on a firmer footing. They are being managed by CAS's National Space Science Center (NSSC), which hopes to launch 3 more missions in 2016. One is the Hard X-ray Modulation Telescope to observe black holes, neutron stars, and other astronomical phenomena. NSSC and other CAS institutes are also working on a microgravity and life science research mission, dubbed Shijian-10, that features a re-entry capsule to return some of the experiments to Earth for analysis. There is also a satellite for quantum science experiments in the works. NSSC has set up a new mission control center for scientific satellites in Huairou, a northern suburb of Beijing.

"For sure, more [scientific missions] are to come," says Azzarello, who adds that he is looking forward to future opportunities to collaborate with China's growing space science program.

China launches satellite to join the hunt for dark matter | Science/AAAS | News

 

[JSCh]

Millet: the missing piece in the puzzle of prehistoric humans’ transition from hunter-gatherers to farmers | University of Cambridge

New research shows a cereal familiar today as birdseed was carried across Eurasia by ancient shepherds and herders laying the foundation, in combination with the new crops they encountered, of ‘multi-crop’ agriculture and the rise of settled societies. Archaeologists say ‘forgotten’ millet has a role to play in modern crop diversity and today’s food security debate.

The domestication of the small-seeded cereal millet in North China around 10,000 years ago created the perfect crop to bridge the gap between nomadic hunter-gathering and organised agriculture in Neolithic Eurasia, and may offer solutions to modern food security, according to new research.

Now a forgotten crop in the West, this hardy grain – familiar in the west today as birdseed – was ideal for ancient shepherds and herders, who carried it right across Eurasia, where it was mixed with crops such as wheat and barley. This gave rise to ‘multi-cropping’, which in turn sowed the seeds of complex urban societies, say archaeologists.

A team from the UK, USA and China has traced the spread of the domesticated grain from North China and Inner Mongolia into Europe through a “hilly corridor” along the foothills of Eurasia. Millet favours uphill locations, doesn’t require much water, and has a short growing season: it can be harvested 45 days after planting, compared with 100 days for rice, allowing a very mobile form of cultivation.

Nomadic tribes were able to combine growing crops of millet with hunting and foraging as they travelled across the continent between 2500 and 1600 BC. Millet was eventually mixed with other crops in emerging populations to create ‘multi-crop’ diversity, which extended growing seasons and provided our ancient ancestors with food security.

The need to manage different crops in different locations, and the water resources required, depended upon elaborate social contracts and the rise of more settled, stratified communities and eventually complex ‘urban’ human societies.

Researchers say we need to learn from the earliest farmers when thinking about feeding today’s populations, and millet may have a role to play in protecting against modern crop failure and famine.

“Today millet is in decline and attracts relatively little scientific attention, but it was once among the most expansive cereals in geographical terms. We have been able to follow millet moving in deep history, from where it originated in China and spread across Europe and India,” said Professor Martin Jones from the University of Cambridge’s Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, who is presenting the research findings today at the Shanghai Archaeological Forum.

“These findings have transformed our understanding of early agriculture and society. It has previously been assumed that early agriculture was focused in river valleys where there is plentiful access to water. However, millet remains show that the first agriculture was instead centred higher up on the foothills – allowing this first pathway for ‘exotic’ eastern grains to be carried west.”

The researchers carried out radiocarbon dating and isotope analysis on charred millet grains recovered from archaeological sites across China and Inner Mongolia, as well as genetic analysis of modern millet varieties, to reveal the process of domestication that occurred over thousands of years in northern China and produced the ancestor of all broomcorn millet worldwide.

“We can see that millet in northern China was one of the earliest centres of crop domestication, occurring over the same timescale as rice domestication in south China and barley and wheat in west China,” explained Jones.

“Domestication is hugely significant in the development of early agriculture – humans select plants with seeds that don’t fall off naturally and can be harvested, so over several thousand years this creates plants that are dependent on farmers to reproduce,” he said.

“This also means that the genetic make-up of these crops changes in response to changes in their environment – in the case of millet, we can see that certain genes were ‘switched off’ as they were taken by farmers far from their place of origin.”

As the network of farmers, shepherds and herders crystallised across the Eurasian corridor, they shared crops and cultivation techniques with other farmers, and this, Jones explains, is where the crucial idea of ‘multi-cropping’ emerged.

“The first pioneer farmers wanted to farm upstream in order to have more control over their water source and be less dependent on seasonal weather variations or potential neighbours upstream,” he said. “But when ‘exotic’ crops appear in addition to the staple crop of the region, then you start to get different crops growing in different areas and at different times of year. This is a huge advantage in terms of shoring up communities against possible crop failures and extending the growing season to produce more food or even surplus.

“However, it also introduces a more pressing need for cooperation, and the beginnings of a stratified society. With some people growing crops upstream and some farming downstream, you need a system of water management, and you can’t have water management and seasonal crop rotation without an elaborate social contract.”

Towards the end of the second and first millennia BC larger human settlements, underpinned by multi-crop agriculture, began to develop. The earliest examples of text, such as the Sumerian clay tablets from Mesopotamia, and oracle bones from China, allude to multi-crop agriculture and seasonal rotation.

But the significance of millet is not just in transforming our understanding of our prehistoric past. Jones believes that millet and other small-seeded crops may have an important role to play in ensuring future food security.

“The focus for looking at food security today is on the high-yield crops, rice, maize and wheat, which fuel 50% of the human food chain. However, these are only three of 50 types of cereal, the majority of which are small-grained cereals or “millets”. It may be time to consider whether millets have a role to play in a diverse response to crop failure and famine,” said Jones.

“We need to understand more about millet and how it may be part of the solution to global food security – we may have a lot still to learn from our Neolithic predecessors.”

Inset images: Martin Jones with millet in North China (Martin Jones); Inner Mongolian millet farmer in Chifeng (Martin Jones).

 

[JSCh]

Chinese scientist among Nature's ten people for 2015
Xinhua, December 18, 2015

The world-renowned journal Nature Thursday released its annual list of ten people who mattered in science in 2015, which includes one Chinese scientist whose work in human embryo gene editing has caused repeated debate in the academic circle.

Huang Junjiu, a biologist at Sun Yat-Sen University in Guangzhou.​

"This year's list, compiled after much discussion by Nature's journalists and editors, spans the globe, highlighting individuals who have played important roles in issues ranging from climate change to gene editing to research reproducibility," said Helen Pearson, Nature's Chief Features Editor.

The explosion of interest in CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing has been a major story of this year, and for this reason biologist Junjiu Huang at Sun Yat-Sen University in Guangzhou earned a place on the list.

In April, Huang published the first report of a human embryo with edited genes, sparking a global debate on the ethics of such research.

In his study, Huang and his team used spare embryos from fertility clinics that could not progress to a live birth, and modified the gene, responsible for a kind of blood disorder, in the embryos. To accomplish the task, they adopted a powerful technique known as CRISPR-Cas9, which can be programmed to precisely alter DNA at specific sequences.

He told Nature in April that he wanted to edit the genes of embryos because it "can show genetic problems related to cancer or diabetes, and can be used to study gene function in embryonic development."

Chinese-born chemical engineer Zhenan Bao is also included in the list. The female chemical engineer at Stanford University in California built an artificial skin using carbon nanotube sensors in a multidisciplinary lab focused on integrating electronics into the human body.

Another female on the list is Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). She is featured for her role in the Paris climate negotiations. Figueres has spent more than five years rallying support and bringing nations together in an effort to produce a meaningful accord.

Ali Akbar Salehi, nuclear engineer and head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran is also included in the list. He helped to forge a historic agreement with world powers concerning his country's nuclear activities.

The editors also chose to include Alan Stern, who led NASA's New Horizons mission, which successfully swept past Pluto in July, which is one of the biggest events in planetary science for years.

In addition to Huang, two scientists were included in the list for their gene-related research works.

Christina Smolke is featured for a controversial feat of synthetic biology: stitching together a pathway of 23 different genes from plants, mammals, bacteria and yeast to produce a yeast strain capable of making the powerful pain-killing drugs, opioids. David Reich has been sequencing and analyzing ancient genomes en masse to unpick human history.

Also featured is Russian physicist Mikhail Eremets, whose decades of perseverance with high-pressure physics finally struck gold when he discovered high-temperature superconductivity in the hydrogen sulfide system -- a hugely exciting development in the field.

Meanwhile, Brian Nosek earned his place in the list by leading the campaign to understand issues in scientific reproducibility, culminated this year in a high-profile attempt to replicate findings in 100 psychology studies.

Solar physicist Joan Schmelz is included in the list for her behind-the-scenes efforts to encourage female astronomers to speak up about their experiences of harassment, which helped to bring a festering problem to light.

"Nature's ten reveals how science and scientists continue to play crucial roles in addressing global challenges," said Pearson.

 

[JSCh]

'Red Deer Cave people' bone points to mysterious species of pre-modern human | (e) Science News
Published: Thursday, December 17, 2015 - 18:15 in Paleontology & Archaeology

A thigh bone found in China suggests an ancient species of human thought to be long extinct may have survived until as recently as the end of the last Ice Age. The 14,000 year old bone -- found among the remains of China's enigmatic 'Red Deer Cave people' -- has been shown to have features that resemble those of some of the most ancient members of the human genus, (Homo), despite its young age.

The discovery was made by a joint team led by Associate Professor Darren Curnoe from UNSW Australia (The University of New South Wales) and Professor Ji Xueping from the Yunnan Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology (YICRA, China).

Their study is published today in the journal PLOS ONE.

The findings result from a detailed study of the partial femur, which had lain unstudied for more than a quarter of a century in a museum in southeastern Yunnan, following its excavation along with other fossilised remains from Maludong ('Red Deer Cave') in 1989.

The investigators found that the thigh bone matched those from species like Homo habilis and early Homo erectus that lived more than 1.5 million years ago but are cautious about its identity.

"Its young age suggests the possibility that primitive-looking humans could have survived until very late in our evolution, but we need to careful as it is just one bone," Professor Ji said.

The discovery is expected to be controversial because, until now, it had been thought that the youngest pre-modern humans on mainland Eurasia -- the Neanderthals of Europe and West Asia, and the 'Denisovans' of southern Siberia -- died out about 40,000 years ago, soon after modern humans entered the region.

"The new find hints at the possibility a pre-modern species may have overlapped in time with modern humans on mainland East Asia, but the case needs to be built up slowly with more bone discoveries," Associate Professor Curnoe said.

Like the primitive species Homo habilis, the Maludong thigh bone is very small; the shaft is narrow, with the outer layer of the shaft (or cortex) very thin; the walls of the shaft are reinforced (or buttressed) in areas of high strain; the femur neck is long; and the place of muscle attachment for the primary flexor muscle of the hip (the lesser trochanter) is very large and faces strongly backwards.

Surprisingly, with a reconstructed body mass of about 50 kilograms, the individual was very small by pre-modern and Ice Age human standards.

When the team first announced the discovery of the remains of the Red Deer Cave people from Maludong (Red Deer Cave) in Yunnan Province and Longlin Cave in nearby Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in 2012, it divided the scientific community.

At the time, the UNSW-YICRA team speculated the bones could represent an unknown new species, or perhaps a very early and primitive-looking population of modern humans, which had migrated to the region more than a hundred thousand years ago.

"We published our findings on the skull bones first because we thought they'd be the most revealing, but we were amazed by our studies of the thigh bone, which showed it to be much more primitive than the skulls seem to be," Professor Ji said.

The new discovery once again points towards at least some of the bones from Maludong representing a mysterious pre-modern species. The team has suggested in another recent publication that the skull from Longlin Cave is probably a hybrid between modern humans and an unknown archaic group -- perhaps even the one represented by the Maludong thigh bone.

"The unique environment and climate of southwest China resulting from the uplift of the Tibetan Plateau may have provided a refuge for human diversity, perhaps with pre-modern groups surviving very late," Professor Ji said.

Associate Professor Curnoe said: "This is exciting because it shows the bones from Maludong, after 25 years of neglect, still have an incredible story to tell. There may have been a diversity of different kinds of human living until very recently in southwest China. "The riddle of the Red Deer Cave people gets even more challenging now: Just who were these mysterious Stone Age people? Why did they survive so late? And why only in tropical southwest China?"

• Source: University of New South Wales

 

[JSCh]

Researchers Fabricate Tungsten Alloy with High Ductility and Strength
Dec 17, 2015

As for developing fusion energy, one of the key issues is the research and development of plasma-facing materials (PFMs). In nuclear fusion facilities, the PFMs are exposed to high temperature, high thermal load and high dose irradiation. In this case, performance of PFMs concern the stable operation of fusion reactor. Given this, tungsten materials are considered as one of the most promising candidates for PFMs due to their high melting temperature, high thermal conductivity, high sputtering resistance and low tritium retention. However, as to practical application tungsten materials have their limitations such as room-temperature embrittlement, high ductile to brittle transition temperature (DBTT>400°C), poor machinability, recrystallization embrittlement and irradiation-induced embrittlement.

Since 2012, a study team led by Prof. FANG Qianfeng and Prof. LIU Changsong from the Institute of Solid State Physics, Chinese Academy of Science (ISSP, CAS) have conducted a series of systemic investigations on the strengthening and toughening of tungsten materials through GB purifying/strengthening, oxide/carbide dispersion-strengthening, micro-alloying and hot plastic working. These studies provide a basis for fabricating high performance tungsten alloys with optimal microstructures.

Recently, the study team joined force with LUO Guangnan from the Institute of Plasma Physics (IPP, CAS) and LIU Xiang from Southwestern Institute of Physics (SWIP) conducted an experiment through which they managed to design and manufacture tungsten alloys plate with extraordinary high strength and ductility as well as excellent thermal shock resistance. The design possesses strengthening of the tungsten grain through intragranular ZrC nano-particles pinning and accumulating dislocations, the special coherent interfaces of grain/phase boundaries (GB/PBs) and the diminishing oxygen (O) impurity at GBs, which strengthens GB/PBs and thereby enhances the ductility, strength and plasticity of W alloy. An unprecedented three-point bending as well as tensile ductility and strength, in terms of flexural strain and total elongation to failure, has been derived from the resulting W-Zr-C alloy.

The W-Zr-C alloy thick plates (8.5 mm in thickness) show a high flexural strength of 2.5 GPa and a flexural strain of 3% at room temperature (RT) and a low DBTT of about 100°C. The tensile strength is about 991 MPa at RT and 582 MPa at 500°C, while the total elongation is about 1.1% at RT and as large as 41% at 500°C, respectively. In addition, the W-Zr-C alloy plate can sustain 4.4 MJ/m2 (0.88 GW/m2, 5 ms/pulse) or 100 shots of 1.0 MJ/m2 (1 GW/m2, 1 ms/pulse) transient thermal load without any cracks.

The synergistic effects of strengthening tungsten grain through intragranular ZrC nano-particles dispersion, the completely coherent or semi-coherent interfaces between W matrix and ZrC dispersoids, enhancing GBs by formation of high thermal stability W-Zr-Cx-Oy at GBs as well as fine grains lead to the extraordinary ductility/strength in bulk W-Zr-C alloy. This design idea not only benefits batch production of engineering-applied W alloy but also lays foundation for new alloys with higher ductility and strength.

The study was published in the journal of Scientific Reports entitled Extraordinary high ductility/strength of the interface designed bulk W-ZrC alloy plate at relatively low temperature.

This study was supported by the National Magnetic Confinement Fusion Program (Grant No. 2015GB112000), National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos.11374299, 51301164, 11375230, 11274305, 11475216), Anhui provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 1408085QE77) and Users with Potential of Hefei Science Center.

Figure 1. Advanced carbide dispersion-strengthened tungsten alloys from laboratory to industrial scale (Image by XIE Zhuoming and LIU Rui) ​

Figure 2. The mechanical properties, microstructure and heat shock resistance of W-ZrC alloys. (Image by XIE Zhuoming)​

 

[bobsm]

Electrical advance offers power without the wait
2015-12-19 10:57China DailyEditor: Li Yan

Electric cars seem to be an ideal option among next-generation automobiles: They are eco-friendly and accelerate fast with less noise, among other benefits.

The trouble is that every 300 kilometers you may have to wait hours to refill your batteries at a charging station.

Now, researchers from China and the United States have come up with a possible solution. On Friday, a research result published in the journal Science reported a method that promises to triple the energy capacity of supercapacitors, making them comparable - and perhaps superior - to some advanced batteries.

"We have managed to find a balance between fast-charging and storage capacity that could make supercapacitors available for practical applications," said Lin Tianquan, a member of the research team from the Shanghai Institute of Ceramics affiliated with the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Lithium-ion batteries, like those used in mobile phones and electric cars, are characterized by high capacity compared with their volume and weight. But the disadvantage is obvious, too: they usually take a long time to charge and have limited peak power because the risk of overheating.

Supercapacitors are a different type of energy storage device. Usually, supercapacitors have superfast recharging times and higher limits on output power, but the storage capacity is only 5 percent of that of lithium-ion batteries.

Researchers at the Shanghai Institute of Ceramics, Peking University and the University of Pennsylvania improved a material called grapheme to increase the storage of supercapacitors while keeping their other good features.

"We managed to enhance the properties of supercapacitors by changing the structure of graphene," said Huang Fuqiang, a researcher at the Shanghai Institute of Ceramics.

Graphene is one of the thinnest, lightest, strongest and most conductive materials known to man. It consists of a single layer of carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb structure. The scientists changed the structure into tubes 4 to 6 nanometers wide. The tubes allow an increase storage capacity.

Before the improvement, a bus could recharge for 30 seconds and run for 5 kilometers on a traditional supercapacitor.

"That works in a small city or airport, but there is obviously a lot to be desired," I-Wei Chen, a materials physicist at the University of Pennsylvania who also worked on the breakthrough, was quoted as saying by IEEE Spectrum, a magazine of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in the US.

"Our battery has five times the energy, so it can run 25 kilometers and still charge at the same speed. We are then talking about serious applications in a serious way in transportation," he said.

Electrical advance offers power without the wait


_________________________________________________________________________


Nitrogen-doped mesoporous carbon of extraordinary capacitance for electrochemical energy storage
Tianquan Lin1,2, I-Wei Chen3, Fengxin Liu1, Chongyin Yang1, Hui Bi1, Fangfang Xu1, Fuqiang Huang1,2,*
+ Author Affiliations

1State Key Laboratory of High Performance Ceramics and Superfine Microstructure and CAS Key Laboratory of Materials for Energy Conversion, Shanghai Institute of Ceramics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200050, P.R. China.
2Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences and State Key Laboratory of Rare Earth Materials Chemistry and Applications, College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, Peking University, Beijing 100871, P.R. China.
3Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA.

ABSTRACT EDITOR'S SUMMARY
Carbon-based supercapacitors can provide high electrical power, but they do not have sufficient energy density to directly compete with batteries. We found that a nitrogen-doped ordered mesoporous few-layer carbon has a capacitance of 855 farads per gram in aqueous electrolytes and can be bipolarly charged or discharged at a fast, carbon-like speed. The improvement mostly stems from robust redox reactions at nitrogen-associated defects that transform inert graphene-like layered carbon into an electrochemically active substance without affecting its electric conductivity. These bipolar aqueous-electrolyte electrochemical cells offer power densities and lifetimes similar to those of carbon-based supercapacitors and can store a specific energy of 41 watt-hours per kilogram (19.5 watt-hours per liter).


https://www.sciencemag.org/content/350/6267/1508.abstract?related-urls=yes&legid=sci;350/6267/1508

 

[JSCh]

Chinese-led study finds different variants of MERS virus
Source:Xinhua Published: 2015-12-19 13:01:00

The Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) coronavirus has become enzootic in dromedary camels in Saudi Arabia and diverged into five different variants, according to a Chinese-led study published in the Friday issue of the journal Science.

In a second study published in the same journal, researchers designed a vaccine shown to be effective in protecting dromedaries against the virus.

Over the past three years, several MERS outbreaks have been reported in the Middle East and most recently in South Korea, with a fatality rate of roughly 35 percent.

Arabian camels are a common host for the MERS virus, and one of the most likely sources of human infection, the researchers said. The virus can diversify in the animals and then be passed to people, but little is known about its prevalence there and the route by which it is transmitted to humans.

To gain more insights, researchers took samples from more than 1,300 camels in Saudi Arabia, the country most affected by MERS, between May 2014 and April 2015.

The overall infection rate of the MERS virus among this sample was 12 percent with a peak during the winter season, December 2014 to January 2015, at 21 to 23 percent, said the study, led by Professor Yi Guan and Assistant Professor Huachen Zhu at the University of Hong Kong, in collaboration with King Abdulaziz University, Saudi Arabia; and scientists from Mainland China, Australia and Egypt.

The MERS virus was predominantly shed from the respiratory tracts of camels, with over 25 percent of nasal swabs positive for coronaviruses, and only one percent of samples from digestive tracts positive. "Thus, air-borne transmission is the most likely way to spread the virus," they concluded.

Genetic sequencing identified five different lineages of the virus, all of which have the ability to infect both humans and camels, said the study.

Viruses that led to the South Korean outbreak and the recent human infections in the Middle East were from lineage 5, which was generated by recombination between viruses of lineages 3 and 4.

"This novel recombinant virus lineage appeared in Saudi Arabian camels as early as in July 2014, while human infections with viruses of this lineage were only reported from February 2015 onwards," Zhu said.

"The human MERS coronavirus identified in South Korea early this summer shows extremely high similarity to a camel virus sampled in March 2015 in Riyadh, indicating the origin of Korean viruses is from camels of the Middle East," he added.

The researchers also found two other coronaviruses co-circulating with the MERS coronavirus in the camels, including one closely related to the human 229E coronavirus that causes common colds in humans.

The results showed that around 6.9 percent of Saudi Arabian camels were simultaneously infected by two or three coronavirus species, and over half of the MERS coronavirus-positive camels were also infected with at least one other coronavirus.

Co-infections of different coronavirus species occur frequently in camels, highlighting the role of dromedary camels as an important host for coronaviruses, they said.

In addition, young dromedary camels, under one year old, played an important role in maintaining and spreading this virus.

In the second study, European researchers found after administering a candidate vaccine both nasally and intramuscularly, all camels developed detectable levels of antibodies against the MERS virus within three weeks.

Upon infection with the virus, these vaccinated camels experienced only mild clinical symptoms and were found to have significantly lower levels of the virus compared to those who did not receive the vaccine.

"This is nonetheless a very significant step forward in the fight against this pathogen," study author Joaquim Segales, lecturer at the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, said in a statement.

"Now we need to delve more deeply into the duration of the immunity and dosage before applying it in real situations."

 

[Martian2]

TSMC's patent portfolio tops international semiconductor manufacturing rankings | IEEE

TSMC's patent portfolio tops international rankings - The China Post

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On the right, select only the "Semiconductor Mfg (ie. manufacturing)" sector.

Interactive: Patent Power 2015 - IEEE Spectrum

 

[TaiShang]

Chinese scientists develop material for super-powered battery
December 20, 2015

Chinese scientists have successfully developed a supercapacitor with better energy capacity using nitrogen and graphene-like carbon.

"We are able to make carbon a much better supercapacitor," said Huang Fuqiang, a material chemist at the the Shanghai Institute of Ceramics.

The new material will enable electric vehicles travel 35 kilometers after charging for just seven seconds, said the research team from the institute.

Details of the research were published in the latest issue of the journal "Science."

 

[JSCh]

CIMC Raffles pins hopes on offshore

• By Zhong Nan In Shanghai And Wangqian In Yantai, Shandong (China Daily)
• Updated: 2015-12-21 10:07

CIMC Raffles Offshore Ltd conducts trial of a newly completed $550 million deepwater semisubmersible drilling rig named North Dragon at its Yantai production base in East China's Shandong province. [Photo/Provided To China Daily]​

Firm thinks focus on maritime engineering vessels and equipment is key to Chinese shipyards' turnaround

With the global shipbuilding industry adrift in choppy waters amid waning demand, Yantai-based CIMC Raffles Offshore Ltd is looking to not only stay afloat but maintain robust growth by exporting more offshore oil rigs and engineering vessels.

CIMC Raffles is an equipment manufacturing subsidiary of China International Marine Containers (Group) Ltd, the country's transportation equipment producer.

Earlier this month, it completed development of a $550 million deepwater semi-submersible drilling rig named North Dragon at its Yantai production base in East China's Shandong province.

The rig was built for North Sea Rigs Holding AS of Norway, one of the largest offshore oil producers in Europe. It is the first China-made semi-submersible drilling rig capable of operating in the Arctic area with temperatures of minus 20 degrees Centigrade and withstanding storms in the North Sea and Barents Sea.

The platform will be able to operate in seawater depths of up to 1,200 meters and drill to a depth of 8,000 meters.

According to a survey by the United States Geological Survey, the North Sea has 13 percent of undeveloped petroleum and 30 percent of undeveloped natural gas.

Yu Ya, president of CIMC Raffles, said many Chinese shipyards' earning capability is being squeezed by low technical content, appreciation of renminbi and blind expansion.

So, developing maritime engineering vessels and equipment will be key to Chinese shipyards' turnaround. Competition with South Korean and Japanese shipbuilders could also help.

In the first half of this year, Chinese shipyards received orders for new vessels with a collective capacity of 11.19 million deadweight tons, accounting for 27.6 percent of the global market share, while South Korea's shipbuilding industry, a powerful rival of China's, secured 44.6 percent of the world's market share, data from the Beijing-based China Association of the National Shipbuilding Industry show.

Offshore engineering products are essentially functional vessels and oil drilling platforms that can float in deep water.

Offshore gas and oil companies use these vessels to process the natural gas and crude pumped up from the ocean floor. In some cases, they are also used in the extraction process.

Since 2009, CIMC Raffles has delivered 10 semi-submersible drilling rigs and another five are under construction, two of which will be able to work in the North Sea in 2016 and 2017.

The company's sales of offshore engineering products totaled $1.8 billion across global markets in 2014. Energy companies from Brazil, Norway, Mexico, Malaysia, Russia and Italy are its main clients.

"Even though offshore engineering products and vessels are more costly and complex to build, the burgeoning global demand for energy resources is expected to keep orders flowing. While the global shipping industry is unlikely to see a notable upturn anytime soon, demand for offshore energy vessels has steadily increased in recent years," said Yu.

Supported by more than 13,000 employees, including 800 engineers and researchers, CIMC Raffles already has the technology to make products that have a longer life cycle, perform better under extreme weather conditions and the methods to use more advanced materials in building oil rigs or vessels.

Eager to enhance the company's export abilities, its parent CIMC acquired Bassoe Technology AB, the well-known Swedish provider of design services and equipment for offshore drilling rigs in 2013.

With a comprehensive concept and creative design capabilities of Bassoe Technology, CIMC Raffles has initiated a China-European researching methodology.

"This acquisition gives us an opportunity to build new offshore engineering equipment and related ships with more complex technical edges," said He Changhai, director of CIMC Raffles' research and development center.

He said the main reasons why the company is betting big on offshore engineering products are high international energy demand and the insatiable global appetite for natural resources.

Established in 1977 as a shipyard to build bulk carriers, the company now operates three offshore engineering product manufacturing bases in Yantai, Haiyang and Longkou. Eager to diversify its business categories, its research and development center also focuses on wind power systems, high-end shipbuilding, seawater desalination, rotating machinery, condition assessment and equipment life extension programs.

"If you look at the global market for ships, you can see signs of decline everywhere," He said.

"We want to shift our core business to more high-end offshore engineering as apart from higher profits, there is less competition as not too many shipyards are capable of making either offshore engineering equipment or vessels."

Guo Dacheng, president of the CANSI, said offshore engineering is unlikely to see a slowdown in the near future. Deepwater fields are expected to be the main sources of conventional energy yet to be discovered and developed.

 

[JSCh]

The World’s First Smart Ship “i-Dolphin” Unveiled | Maritime news | VesselFinder
By John Stansfield, December 4, 2015, Vessels

The world’s first smart ship has been revealed at the Smart Ship Development Forum & Smart Ship Demo “i-Dolphin” Release Meeting sponsored by CSSC on December 1st in Shanghai, China.

The 38,800 dwt smart ship project is the first civilian program of CSSC Innovation, planed and led by Shanghai Ship Design and Research Institute with participation from CSSC Systems Engineering Research Institute, CSSC Huangpu-Wenchong Shipbuilding Co., Ltd, CSSC Power Research Institute and Hudong Heavy Machinery Co., Ltd.

Image: DNV GL​

The project is aimed at the shipbuilding of smart demo ship based on “Green Dolphin” a 38,800 dwt bulk carrier. The 38,800 dwt smart ship will be designed with the highest technical specifications, smart management and control systems. The ordering specifications have been completed. Several modules have been applied in trial assembly and used on other ships, with the commercial plans for building a smart demo ship having been confirmed.

The smart ship is based on big data and applies up-to-date information technology including real-time data transmission and collection, large-capacity calculations, digital modeling and remote control. All of this is designed in to the ship to better guarantee navigational safety and improve operational efficiency of ship.

According to Wei Muheng, an engineer working at the Intelligent Maintenance Laboratory for Platform System Research Institute under CSSC Systems Engineering Research Institute, the 38,800 dwt smart ship project will set up a whole-ship information perception system and realize information integration and data sharing between all the systems and equipment on the ship.

The project will also utilize intelligent management and control systems, independent analysis, assessment and predictions. This will help with communication between the smart ship and shore as well as providing remote maintenance and upgrades of ship systems.

Designed with remote monitoring, support, management and control by using onshore resources to improve the ships operations and safety. With the ships data analysis and optimizing ship design and shipbuilding techniques, the project can provide the shipowner with life cycle value of the ship.

Key smart functions by the smart ship include the overall performance and status monitoring; ship status safety assessment; ship energy efficiency monitoring, analysis, assessment and optimization; engine room equipment and system operation, status and monitoring; engine room equipment operation, safety and performance analysis; engine room equipment maintenance including prediction and reliability, status assessment and maintenance optimization; sea route; ship navigation; navigational operation and control information analysis; environmental impact analysis; navigational optimization.

The companies involved plan to start construction September 2016 and deliver in 2017. The entire ship will be run on smart systems, optimizing everything while maintaining safe operations.

Today, China’s smart ship development aided by good policy and a highly technical environment. In May of this year, the State Council announced the “Made in China 2025” policy, encouraging a comprehensive implantation and manufacturing in China. As a high-tech ship, the smart ship is highlighted for priority development in Made in China 2025. In August, China published the Action Program for Promoting Big Data Development and vigorously developing big data has ascended as a national strategy.

China has accelerated smart ship research in recent years. Under the guidance of CSSC, CSSC Systems Engineering Research Institute launched the “Intelligent Information Management and Practical Technology Innovation Center for Marine Equipment” with NSF IMS in 2013, with the aim of boosting relevant core technology and product R&D.

In September 2015, CSSC Systems Engineering Research Institute and China Merchants Energy Transport Co., Ltd. signed the strategic cooperation agreement on “Ship and Shipping Intelligence,” to drive industry and network integration, carry out intelligent technology applications in new-buildings and explore shipping information in new ways. The implementation of the 38,800 dwt smart ship project will push China’s smart ship R&D forward.

Source: 中国船舶工业集团公司

 

[Martian2]

China Launches Country's First Dark Matter Satellite | CCTV

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China’s dark-matter satellite launches era of space science : Nature News

"But Wukong, more officially known as the Dark Matter Particle Explorer (DAMPE), is also notable for being the first in a series of five space-science missions to emerge from the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Strategic Priority Program on Space Science, which kicked off in 2011." (third paragraph in article below)

 

[JSCh]

China doctors conduct "animal-human" cornea transplant
2015-12-21 21:02:52 | Editor: huaxia

QINGDAO, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- Shandong Eye Institute, east China, announced Monday the successful transplant of a bio-engineered pig cornea into a human eye in late September.

"The patient's vision has gradually improved after a three month recovery period, which means the transplant was a success," said Zhai Hualei, director of the institute's cornea division.

Wang Xinyi, 60, had a serious corneal ulcer. He could only see moving objects within 10 centimeters.

"The doctors originally told me that my father might lose sight in one eye because there are not enough cornea donations," Wang's son said.

The transplant used a bio-engineered cornea named Acornea, the first such product to be accredited by the China Food and Drug Administration in late April.

"With the pig cornea as the main material, the product is devoid of cells, hybrid proteins, and other antigens. It retains a natural collagen structure with remarkable bio-compatibility and biological safety," said Zhai.

Cornea diseases are one of the biggest causes of blindness in China, blinding around 4 million people. New cases are increasing by 100,000 each year, however, only about 5,000 people receive a cornea transplant annually.

Beijing Tongren Hospital and Wuhan Xiehe Hospital, among others, have been conducting clinical trials of Acornea since 2010, recording a success rate of 94.44 percent, similar to the results seen with donated human corneas.

"This bio-engineered cornea may help millions of people to see again," Zhai said.

 

[JSCh]

Sino-Russian cooperation on nuclear cures for cancer

• By Ma Chenguang in Hefei (chinadaily.com.cn)
• Updated: 2015-12-21 15:07

Chinese and Russian top scientific agencies signed an agreement on Friday to make superconducting cyclotron (SC) therapy equipment, the first of its kind in the world aiming to provide the most advanced nuclear cure to some 14 million cancer suffers worldwide.

An official from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) said as high-energy proton and heavy-ion radiotherapies are the world's most advanced radiation therapy technology, offering precision "strikes" for solid tumors in cancer patients, the design of the SC200 will be a "substantive contribution" to world healthcare.

The China-Russia Superconducting Cyclotron Joint Research Center, set up on Friday, will try to bring out related systems and components of SC200 in 2017 and construct the equipment in 2018, said Kuang Guangli, president of CAS Hefei Institutes of Physical Science (CASHIPS).

The research center is jointly launched by CASHIPS' Institute of Plasma Physics and Russia's Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) based in Dubna, 110 kilometers north of Moscow. The two have been cooperating for more than 30 years.

According to the International Agency for Research on Cancer of the World Health Organization, the number of cancer sufferers rose to an estimated 14 million new cases per year since 2012 and is expected to hit 22 million annually within the next 20 years.

Ludmila Ogorodova, vice-minister of Russia's Ministry of Education and Science, said at the launching ceremony that she is fully confident the advanced equipment will provide better cures for cancer, which is a mutation with a wide range of causes, including environmental risks.

She said the 21st century will be a century for big science, and the establishment of the Russian-Chinese joint center will be a base for research and innovation for scientists from the two nations.

Cao Jianlin, former vice-minister of China's Ministry of Science and Technology, said he is pleased to see the steady growth and enrichment of the long-term Sino-Russian cooperation in the field of science and technology.

While believing the SC therapy equipment will be a success, he called for the early completion of it in order to offer cures to cancer sufferers as soon as possible.

Kuang said the future SC therapy equipment will be stationed in Hefei's Ion Medical Center, which is to be built by CASHIPS and Hefei municipal government and hoped to be one of the country's leading institutions providing appropriate medical treatment and rehabilitation services for cancer patients.

According to China's National Cancer Registry Center, the number of new cancer patients rose to some 3.12 million each year in the country, and is expected to climb to 4 million by 2020.

machenguang@chinadaily.com.cn

 

[JSCh]

Chinese rover analyzes Moon rocks: First new 'ground truth' in 40 years
Rover finds volcanic rocks unlike those returned by Apollo and Luna missions, tantalizing clues to the period of lunar volcanism

• December 22, 2015
• By Diana Lutz

CNAS/CLEP
The Chinese lunar rover, Yutu, photographed by its lander Chang’e-3, after the lander touched down in Mare Imbrium, a giant impact basin that had been filled by successive lava flows.​

In 2013, Chang'e-3, an unmanned lunar mission, touched down on the northern part of the Imbrium basin, one of the most prominent of the lava-filled impact basins visible from Earth.

It was a beautiful landing site, said Bradley L. Jolliff, PhD, the Scott Rudolph Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, who is a participant in an educational collaboration that helped analyze Chang'e-3 mission data. The lander touched down on a smooth flood basalt plain next to a relatively fresh impact crater (now officially named the Zi Wei crater) that had conveniently excavated bedrock from below the regolith for the Yutu rover to study.

Since the Apollo program ended, American lunar exploration has been conducted mainly from orbit. But orbital sensors mostly detect the regolith (the ground-up surface layer of fragmented rock) that blankets the Moon, and the regolith is typically mixed and difficult to interpret.

Because Chang'e-3 landed on a comparatively young lava flow, the regolith layer was thin and not mixed with debris from elsewhere. Thus it closely resembled the composition of the underlying volcanic bedrock. This characteristic made the landing site an ideal location to compare in situ analysis with compositional information detected by orbiting satellites.

“We now have ‘ground truth’ for our remote sensing, a well-characterized sample in a key location,” Jolliff said. “We see the same signal from orbit in other places, so we now know that those other places probably have similar basalts.”

NASA/GSFC/ASU
Chang'e-3 landing site is indicated with a white square in this lunar map, a mosaic made with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter's Wide Angle Camera. The landing sites of the Apollo missions are in red.​

The basalts at the Chang'e-3 landing site also turned out to be unlike any returned by the Apollo and Luna sample return missions.

“The diversity tells us that the Moon’s upper mantle is much less uniform in composition than Earth's,” Jolliff said. “And correlating chemistry with age, we can see how the Moon’s volcanism changed over time.”

Two partnerships were involved in the collection and analysis of this data, published in the journal Nature Communications Dec. 22. Scientists from a number of Chinese institutions involved with the Chang'e-3 mission formed one partnership; the other was a long-standing educational partnership between Shandong University in Weihai, China, and Washington University in St. Louis.

A mineralogical mystery

The Moon, thought to have been created by the collision of a Mars-sized body with the Earth, began as a molten or partially molten body that separated as it cooled into a crust, mantle and core. But the buildup of heat from the decay of radioactive elements in the interior then remelted parts of the mantle, which began to erupt onto the surface some 500 million years after the Moon’s formation, pooling in impact craters and basins to form the maria, most of which are on the side of the Moon facing the Earth.

The American Apollo (1969-1972) and Russian Luna (1970-1976) missions sampled basalts from the period of peak volcanism that occurred between 3 and 4 billion years ago. But the Imbrium basin, where Chang'e-3 landed, contains some of the younger flows — 3 billion years old or slightly less.

NASA/LPI
Four views of the Mare Imbrium basin and the Chang'e-3 landing site demonstrate how different the Moon looks to different types of remote sensing, underscoring the need for ground truth to calibrate the orbital observations. For a larger version of this image click here. ​

The basalts returned by the Apollo and Luna missions had either a high titanium content or low to very low titanium; intermediate values were missing. But measurements made by an alpha-particle X-ray spectrometer and a near-infrared hyperspectral imager aboard the Yutu rover indicated that the basalts at the Chang'e-3 landing site are intermediate in titanium, as well as rich in iron, said Zongcheng Ling, PhD, associate professor in the School of Space Science and Physics at Shandong University in Weihai, and first author of the paper.

Titanium is especially useful in mapping and understanding volcanism on the Moon because it varies so much in concentration, from less than 1 weight percent TiO2 to over 15 percent. This variation reflects significant differences in the mantle source regions that derive from the time when the early magma ocean first solidified.

Minerals crystallize from basaltic magma in a certain order, explained Alian Wang, PhD, research professor in earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences at Washington University. Typically, the first to crystallize are two magnesium- and iron-rich minerals (olivine and pyroxene) that are both a little denser than the magma, and sink down through it, then a mineral (plagioclase feldspar), that is less dense and floats to the surface. This process of separation by crystallization led to the formation of the Moon’s mantle and crust as the magma ocean cooled.

The titanium ended up in a mineral called ilmenite (FeTiO3) that typically doesn’t crystallize until a very late stage, when perhaps only 5 percent of the original melt remains. When it finally crystallized, the ilmenite-rich material, which is also dense, sank into the mantle, forming areas of Ti enrichment.

“The variable titanium distribution on the lunar surface suggests that the Moon’s interior was not homogenized,” Jolliff said. “We’re still trying to figure out exactly how this happened. Possibly there were big impacts during the magma ocean stage that disrupted the mantle’s formation.”

Another clue to the Moon's past

The story has another twist that also underscores the importance of checking orbital data against ground truth. The remote sensing data for Chang'e-3’s landing site showed that it was rich in olivine as well as titanium.

That doesn’t make sense, Wang said, because olivine usually crystallizes early and the titanium-rich ilmenite crystallizes late. Finding a rock that is rich in both is a bit strange.

But Yutu solved this mystery as well. In olivine, silicon is paired with either magnesium or iron but the ratio of those two elements is quite variable in different forms of the mineral. The early-forming olivine would be magnesium rich, while the olivine detected by Yutu has a composition that ranges from intermediate in iron to iron-rich.

“That makes more sense,” Jolliff said, “because iron-enriched olivine and ilmenite are more likely to occur together.

“You still have to explain how you get to an olivine-rich and ilmenite-rich rock. One way to do that would be to mix, or hybridize, two different sources," he said.

The scientists infer that late in the magma-ocean crystallization, iron-rich pyroxene and ilmenite, which formed late and at the crust-mantle boundary, might have begun to sink, and early-formed magnesium-rich olivine might have begun to rise. As this occurred, the two minerals might have mixed and hybridized.

“Given these data, that is our interpretation,” Jolliff said.

In any case, it is clear that these newly characterized basalts reveal a more diverse Moon than the one that emerged from studies following the Apollo and Luna missions. Remote sensing suggests that there are even younger and even more diverse basalts on the Moon, waiting for future robotic or human explorers to investigate, Jolliff said.

Chinese rover analyzes Moon rocks: First new 'ground truth' in 40 years
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