China Science & Technology Forum

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

http://www.pharmaceutical-technology.com

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

Scientists have reported in the Lancet that in a Phase III trial involving 10,000 children, the vaccine was 90% effective against enterovirus 71 (EV71), one of the viruses which causes the disease.

Groups of researchers in Jiangsu and Beijing tested the vaccine in healthy children aged six to 35 months over 28 days.
Writing in the Lancet, the scientists said; "EV71 vaccine provides high efficacy, satisfactory safety and sustained immunogenicity."

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

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

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

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

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

 

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Super rice project could be finished in 3 years

Updated: 2013-04-27 10:53 ( chinadaily.com.cn)

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

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

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



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

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

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

 

[faithfulguy]

Innovative idea from an old report

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

link

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

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

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

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

The idea isn’t simply to flirt with cataclysmic danger, but to bring a small object (they suggest a 10-meter object called 2008EA9 that will pass nearby in 2049) into a loop around the Earth so we can study it closely for a few years. If we can get the art of capturing asteroids orbitally down to a science, we could use it to temporarily make asteroids into Earth-bound satellites (orbiting at about twice the distance of the moon), mine them for minerals, and then send them on their ways.
Read the paper at arXiv.

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

 

[soaringeagle]

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

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

 

[shuttler]

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

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

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

 

[cirr]

Scheduled to blast off in Mid June, the Shenzhou 10 Spacecraft was transferred to its launch pad yesterday（03.06.2013）

 

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

thepharmaletter.com

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

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

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

 

[cirr]

China's 1st electric-power twin-east UAV completes its maiden flight：

PLA Daily reports。

 

[cirr]

New CRH3A rolling off the production line:

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

 

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Cushion added for life in orbit


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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

China's Tianhe-2 Caps Top 10 Supercomputers

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

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

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

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

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

"Most of the features of the system were developed in China, and they are only using Intel for the main compute part. The interconnect, operating system, front-end processors and software are mainly Chinese," he said in a statement. Dongarra saw the Tianhe-2 system in May, which led to a flurry of leaks about its tremendous power and capabilities earlier this month.

But the United States is holding fast to its overall dominance of the Top500 list: 253 of the 500 systems are still American-made. China comes in second place, claiming 65 systems on the list, followed by Japan, the U.K., France, and Germany.

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

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

Photo: Jack Dongarra

 

[shuttler]

China boosts top quality science publications by 35% in 2012

[2013-05-31]

News from the University of Science and Technology of China

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

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

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

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

The Nature Publishing Index 2012 China supplement also presents a ranking by city. Beijing continues to dominate, followed strongly by Shanghai. Hefei, Hong Kong and Wuhan round out the top five cities.

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

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

 

[shuttler]

“蛟龙”号今进行试验性首潜 潜次7小时深度过千米
发布: 2013-6-17 10:25 | 编辑: cuiziyang | 来源: 综合网络

www.takefoto.cn

2013年6月17日 今天 “蛟龙”号首个试验性应用航次将进行首潜，这个潜次的主要目是进行长基线定位系统试验，整个潜次大约需要7小时，下潜深度预期超过1000米。

据“蛟龙”号首个试验性应用航次现场指挥部副总指挥胡震介绍，17日6时工作人员就将开始准备，9时各就各位准备下潜。整个潜次大约需要7小时，下潜和上浮各1小时，水下作业4小时，布放和回收约1小时，16时左右回收潜水器，下潜深度将超过1000米。

“这个潜次的主要目的有三个：一是验证潜水器的状态，二是进行潜水器长基线定位系统试验，三是锻炼潜航员在海山地形的驾驶技能。”胡震说。

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

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

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

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

google translation




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

 

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

 

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

Chinadaily.com.cn


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

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

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

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

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

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

“Three hours after the transplantation, the monkey could spontaneously breath and its vital signs were stable,” Dou said.

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

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

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

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