China Science & Technology Forum

[cirr]

China Set to Build World’s Biggest Waste-to-Energy Power Plant

Designed by a pair of Danish firms, the plant will measure nearly one mile in circumference

BY NICK MAFI

Posted February 10, 2016

A new power plant designed for China by Danish firms Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects and Gottlieb Paludan Architects features a circular layout, a stark departure from traditional plants.

For some, turning various types of waste into energy sounds like crazy a futuristic concept. Yet, it’s a process that’s been happening for several years. But no where in the world will it happen on such a massive scale than in China. Two Danish firms Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects and Gottlieb Paludan Architects have just won a competition to build the world’s largest waste-to-energy power plant. Located on the mountainous outskirts of Shenzhen, the factory will turn 5,500 tons of waste into energy each day. To put this number into context, that’s roughly one-third of the waste produced daily by the city’s 20 million residents. What’s more, the plant will generate additional power through solar panels installed on the 710,000-square-foot roof.

The factory’s circular design, measuring nearly one mile in circumference, will allow the entire plant to be housed within a single building. The facility is meant to be educational as well as functional, and the architects incorporated a network of elevated walkways within the space; visitors will be able to safely tour the plant and observe each part of the conversion process. The goal is to show guests both the amount of waste produced by the city and the exciting capability of the new technology.

Construction will begin this year, with the plant scheduled to start operating in 2020.

China Set to Build World’s Biggest Waste-to-Energy Power Plant | Architectural Digest

 

[JSCh]

Public Release: 12-Feb-2016
Most precise measurement of reactor Antineutrino spectrum reveals intriguing surprise
Daya Bay detects discrepancies with theoretical predictions, provides important reference data for future reactor neutrino experiments

DOE/Brookhaven National Laboratory

Members of the International Daya Bay Collaboration, who track the production and flavor-shifting behavior of electron antineutrinos generated at a nuclear power complex in China, have obtained the most precise measurement of these subatomic particles' energy spectrum ever recorded. The data generated from the world's largest sample of reactor antineutrinos indicate two intriguing discrepancies with theoretical predictions and provide an important measurement that will shape future reactor neutrino experiments. The results have been published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

Studying the behavior of elusive neutrinos holds the potential to unlock many secrets of physics, including details about the history, makeup, and fate of our universe. Neutrinos were among the most abundant particles at the time of the Big Bang, and are still generated abundantly today in the nuclear reactions that power stars and in collisions of cosmic rays with Earth's atmosphere.

They are also emitted as a by-product of power generation in man-made nuclear reactors, giving scientists a powerful way to study them on Earth in a controlled manner. In fact, the study of particles emitted by reactors led to the first detection of neutrinos in the 1950s, a finding once considered impossible due to the extreme inert nature of these particles, which were then only predicted. Since that time reactor experiments, including Daya Bay, have played a crucial role in uncovering the secrets of neutrino oscillation--their tendency to switch among three known flavors: electron, muon, and tau--and other important neutrino properties.

A crucial factor for many of these experiments is knowing how many antineutrinos are emitted in total in these nuclear reactions (the flux), and how many are being produced at particular energies (the energy distribution, or spectrum). In early studies, scientists relied on calculations or other indirect means, such as electron spectrum measurements made on reactor fuels, to estimate these numbers, based on their understanding of the complex fission processes in the reactor core. These methods have rather strong dependence on theoretical models.

The Daya Bay Collaboration now provides the most precise model-independent measurement of the energy spectrum of these elusive particles, and a new measurement of total antineutrino flux. The data were gathered by analyzing more than 300,000 reactor antineutrinos collected over the course of 217 days. The most challenging part of this work was to accurately calibrate the energy response of the detectors. Through dedicated calibration and analysis effort, Daya Bay was able to measure the neutrino energy to an unprecedented precision, better than 1 percent, over a broad energy range of the reactor antineutrinos.

The figure shows the reactor antineutrino energy spectrum measured by Daya Bay (top portion) and the ratio of the measured spectrum to the predicted spectrum (bottom portion). The measurements are shown as horizontal lines with vertical lines representing the range of statistical uncertainty at each data point. The red portion represents the range of theoretical predictions. The data reveal that the measurement has an unexpected deviation from the theoretical prediction around 5 million electron volts (MeV) in the measured energy.

Credit Brookhaven National Laboratory

The measured reactor antineutrino spectrum shows a surprising feature: an excess of antineutrinos at an energy of around 5 million electron volts (MeV) compared with theoretical expectations. This represents a deviation of about 10 percent between the experimental measurement and calculations based on the theoretical models--well beyond the uncertainties--leading to a discrepancy of up to four standard deviations. "This unexpected disagreement between our observation and predictions strongly suggested that the current calculations would need some refinement," commented Kam-Biu Luk of the University of California at Berkeley and DOE's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, a co-spokesperson of the Daya Bay Collaboration. Two other experiments have shown a similar excess at this energy, though with less precision than the new Daya Bay result.

Such deviation shows the importance of the direct measurement of the reactor antineutrino spectrum, particularly for experiments that use the spectrum to measure neutrino oscillations, and may indicate the need to revisit the models underlying the calculations. "We expect that the spectrum measured by Daya Bay will improve with more data and better understanding of the detector response. These improved measurements will be essential for next-generation reactor neutrino experiments such as JUNO," said Jun Cao of the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) in China, a co-spokesperson of Daya Bay and the deputy spokesperson of JUNO, an experiment being built 200 kilometers away from Daya Bay.

Daya Bay's measurement of antineutrino flux--the total number of antineutrinos emitted across the entire energy range--indicates that the reactors are producing 6 percent fewer antineutrinos overall when compared to some of the model-based predictions. This result is consistent with past measurements. This observed deficit has been named the "Reactor Antineutrino Anomaly." This disagreement could arise from the imperfection of the models. Or, more intriguingly, it could be the result of an oscillation involving a new kind of neutrino, the so-called sterile neutrino--postulated by some theories but yet to be detected. Whether the anomaly exists is still an open question.

Background on Daya Bay

The Daya Bay nuclear power complex is located on the southern coast of China, 55 kilometers northeast of Hong Kong. It consists of three nuclear power plants, each with two reactor cores. All six cores are pressurized water reactors with similar design, and each can generate up to 2.9 gigawatt thermal power. Every second, the six reactors emit 3,500 billion billon electron antineutrinos. For this measurement, the Daya Bay experiment used six detectors located at 360 meters to 1.9 kilometers from the reactors. Each detector contains 20 tons of gadolinium-doped liquid scintillator to catch the reactor antineutrinos.

Most precise measurement of reactor Antineutrino spectrum reveals intriguing surprise | EurekAlert! Science News

Scientific paper: "Measurement of the Reactor Antineutrino Flux and Spectrum at Daya Bay" Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 061801 (2016) - Measurement of the Reactor Antineutrino Flux and Spectrum at Daya Bay

 

[meis]

China Could Have a Meltdown-Proof Nuclear Reactor Next Year

source:
China Could Have a Meltdown-Proof Nuclear Reactor Next Year

 

[JSCh]

DNA rice breakthrough raises 'green revolution' hopes
February 15, 2016 by Cecil Morella

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Drawing on a massive bank of varieties stored in the Philippines and state-of-the-art Chinese technology, scientists recently completed the DNA sequencing of more than 3,000 types of rice

Rice-growing techniques learned through thousands of years of trial and error are about to be turbocharged with DNA technology in a breakthrough hailed by scientists as a potential second "green revolution".

Over the next few years farmers are expected to have new genome sequencing technology at their disposal, helping to offset a myriad of problems that threaten to curtail production of the grain that feeds half of humanity.

Drawing on a massive bank of varieties stored in the Philippines and state-of-the-art Chinese technology, scientists recently completed the DNA sequencing of more than 3,000 of the world's most significant types of rice.

With the huge pool of data unlocked, rice breeders will soon be able to produce higher-yielding varieties much more quickly and under increasingly stressful conditions, scientists involved with the project told AFP.

Read more -> http://phys.org/news/2016-02-dna-rice-breakthrough-green-revolution.html

 

[JSCh]

Proposal for the assessment of new methods in plant breeding
February 15, 2016

Comparison of four breeding methodologies: Conventional breeding mainly relies on hybridation. Transgenesis uses genes from other species, cisgenesis genes from related species. In Genome editing, DNA can be altered very specifically. is a type of genetic engineering in which DNA is directly inserted, replaced, or removed from a genome using engineered nucleases, the so called "molecular scissors." Credit: Sanwen Huang/ Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences​

CRISPR/Cas9 is a new method for targeted genetic changes. Together with other methods, it is part of the so-called genome editing toolbox. At the moment, genome-editing is mostly discussed in the context of medical applications, but its use is perhaps even more promising for plant breeding. Scientists from China, the United States and Germany, among them Detlef Weigel of the Max-Planck-Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen, have now proposed a regulatory framework for genome editing in plants that has been published in the journal Nature Genetics.

Read more -> Proposal for the assessment of new methods in plant breeding

More information: Sanwen Huang et al. A proposed regulatory framework for genome-edited crops, Nature Genetics (2016). DOI: 10.1038/ng.3484

 

[JSCh]

Public Release: 16-Feb-2016
How early is infants' attention affected by surrounding culture?
By age 2, infants' attention to objects and events may be shaped by their culture

Northwestern University

• Infants from the U.S. and China looked at the same dynamic scenes
• Adults from the U.S. focus primarily on objects; those from China focus relatively more on events
• Infants' attention in the two cultures showed strong overlap: also reliable differences
• Researchers: Results underscore value of conducting cross-cultural research with infants

EVANSTON, Ill. --- Do the cultures in which we live shape how we view the objects and events in the world that surrounds us? Research with adults has suggested that it does. But how early might any such culturally inflected differences emerge in development?

In a new Northwestern University study, researchers address the issue directly, asking how 24-month-old infants from the United States and China deploy their attention to objects and actions in active scenes.

Researchers found that 24-month-old infants from the U.S. and China -- who are on the threshold of learning words for objects and actions -- have a great deal in common when observing active scenes.

However, infants' looking patterns in the two cultures diverged significantly for a brief period.

In the experiment, all infants watched a series of repeated scenes (e.g., a girl petting a dog). Then, infants watched new scenes in which either object was switched (the girl petting a pillow) or the action was switched (e.g., the girl kissing a dog). This was when their attention diverged.

Infants from China preferred looking at the scenes featuring a new action. In contrast, infants from the U.S. showed the opposite pattern, preferring scenes featuring a new object.

This new result provides the earliest evidence for strong overlap in infants' attention to objects and events. But the research also raises the possibility that by 24 months, infants' attention may already be shaped subtly by the attentional patterns characteristic of adults in their cultural communities.

"There is already reason to suspect that infants' attention to objects and events in dynamic scenes might already be influenced by cultural-specific patterns of attention," said the study's lead author Sandra Waxman, the Louis W. Menk Chair in Psychology in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern and faculty fellow in the University's Institute for Policy Research. "We know, for example, that infants pay attention carefully to the actions of their parents and to others close to them."

Furthermore, decades of previous research suggest that when observing scenes, adults from the U.S. focus predominantly on objects, while those from China and Japan direct more of their attention to the contexts and events in which those objects are engaged.

According to the researchers, the current results underscore the value of conducting cross-cultural research with infants.

"Clearly, 24-month-old infants from the U.S. and China have a great deal in common when attending to dynamic scenes, but they may have also begun to pick up the attentional strategies characteristic of adults in their respective communities," Waxman said. "The results reported here suggest that by the time they reach their second birthdays, infants may be on their way to becoming 'native lookers.'"

###​

"How early is infants' attention to objects and actions shaped by culture? New evidence from 24-month-olds raised in the U.S. and China" was published in Frontiers in Psychology. In addition to Waxman, co-authors include Brock Ferguson, Kathleen Geraghty and Erin Leddon, Northwestern University; and Xiaolan Fu, Jing Liang and Min-Fang Zhao, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China.

NORTHWESTERN NEWS: News Home: Northwestern University News

How early is infants' attention affected by surrounding culture? | EurekAlert! Science News

 

[cirr]

Total Shipment Volume of Huawei FTTH Terminals Exceeds 100 Million



SHENZHEN, China, Feb. 17, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Huawei, a leading global information and communications technology (ICT) company, today announced that its 100 millionth FTTH terminal (an ONT) has rolled off the production line. This makes Huawei the first vendor that has a total shipment volume of 100 million FTTH terminals.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160217/334177

Huawei keeps investing in FTTH technology innovations and launching competitive E2E FTTH solutions. Besides, Huawei also actively participates in the international standardization and has already contributed many drafts. For example, Huawei takes the major positions, such as president, board member, and main editor, in key PON standards organizations, including, ITU-T, IEEE, and BBF. In these positions, Huawei made significant contributions to the standardization of 10G PON, TWDM PON, and WDM PON.

Huawei has been committed to promoting the development of the FTTH industry. In 2007, Huawei released an ONT chip with proprietary intellectual property rights and deployed the world's first commercial large-scale FTTH network in United Arab Emirates. In 2008, Huawei and Verizon (America) jointly carried out the world's first 10G PON test. In 2009, Huawei became the first vendor that deployed over 1 million FTTH terminals. In 2010, Huawei, together with China Telecom, Portugal Telecom, and Etisalat UAE, completed the world's first commercial deployment of 10G PON MDUs. In 2011, Huawei released the industry's first commercial 40G TWDM PON prototype and became the first vendor that delivered more than 10 million ONTs. In 2013, Huawei deployed the industry's first 10G PON ONT first office application (FOA) site for British Telecommunications. In 2014, Huawei released the industry's first intelligent ONT that supports the smart home service and signed a partnership agreement with Shanghai Research Institute of China Telecom in smart home network development. In 2015, Huawei cooperated with China Unicom, Beltelecom in developing an Internet of Things (IoT)-oriented smart home solution. According to an OVUM analysts report, Huawei has secured the top place in FTTH terminal shipment in consecutive seven years.

The FTTH industry has entered a new period of prosperity. New services, such as 4K TV, virtual reality (VR), and holographic imaging, demand increasingly higher bandwidths. The 100 Mbit/s fiber networks are being reconstructed into 1000 Mbit/s networks. Smart home services, including home security, intelligent control, superb entertainment, and online education, will greatly improve user experience. Huawei will continue to innovate and promote the development of the FTTH industry, helping customers achieve business success and enriching people's life through communication.



Huawei targets 60 commercial LTE-A Pro contracts in 2016

BY JUAN PEDRO TOMÁS ON FEBRUARY 17, 2016

LTE, NETWORK INFRASTRUCTURE

LTE-A Pro technology will ‘explode’ this year, Huawei says

Chinese ICT solutions provider Huawei expects to reach 60 commercial networks with its LTE-Advanced Pro-based “4.5G” technology by the end of this year, according to the company’s president of wireless network marketing operation Qiu Heng.

At of the end of 2015, 1 gigabit-per-second transmission had been demonstrated by mobile operators in Canada, Norway, Germany, Kuwait, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, China, Hong Kong and Singapore.

“We are seeing that operators across all regions are interested in the deployment of 4.5G solutions,” Heng said, adding more than 20 operators worldwide have demonstrated or tested the commercial 4.5G technology in collaboration with Huawei since 2014. “We have already started negotiations with some mobile operators for the commercial deployments of 4.5 technology. We believe that this technology will explode in 2016 and that the commercialization of 4.5G will be global.”

Commenting on the future deployment of 4.5G technology in China, the executive said China Mobile has shown interest in the TDD-based technology. “Other operators in China are already talking about the evolution of their 4G networks,” Heng added.

Huawei previously said the introduction of 4.5G technology will allow mobile operators to improve the user experience and support the increase of machine-to-machine communications and the “Internet of Things” as well as new mobile Internet applications, such as virtual-reality glasses and drone technology.

“Because it is an evolution from the existing network, operators can reuse equipment to achieve a higher return on investment with 4.5G,” Heng said.

During a presentation, Huawei also unveiled new 4.5G products under the GigaRadio brand name. The portfolio includes a blade remote radio unit and active antenna unit. The Chinese firm said GigaRadio will be deployed commercially on a large scale this year and will help to accelerate the global adoption of 4.5G.

In October 2015, the 3GPP labeled so-called 4.5G technology as LTE-Advanced Pro. Some aspects of the LTE-Advanced Pro standard include small cell dual-connectivity and architecture, carrier aggregation enhancements, interworking with Wi-Fi, licensed assisted access (at 5 GHz), indoor positioning, single cell-point to multi-point and work on latency reduction.

 

[JSCh]

Protein Discovery Helps Fight Disease
Feb 22, 2016

Shanghai scientists have figured out the structure and regulatory mechanism of a protein family in the human body highly associated with multiple genetic diseases and cancers, which is likely to bring about breakthroughs in medicine.

The discovery, made after years of study by the National Center for Protein Science, Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, a branch of the Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, was published on Thursday on the website of the UK-based journal Nature.

The MLL family of proteins plays a crucial role in the proliferation, growth and development of cells, and their mutation can trigger the improper operation of cells and cause diseases.

For example, 70 to 80 percent of the incidence of acute lymphoblastic leukemia in childhood and 5 to 10 percent of the incidence of acute myeloid leukemia of adults is due to mutations in a protein in the family, according to Chen Yong, one of the lead scientists.

Similarly, mutations in other members of the protein family are associated with diseases such as congenital heart disease, prostate cancer and breast cancer, he said.

"That's why dozens of labs throughout the world have been dedicated to figuring out the structure of the proteins since the first protein family member MML1 was discovered in 1991," Chen said.

In the research, they found the structural differences of the mutations and how that disrupted the interaction of the protein, said Lei Ming, another lead scientist.

"These findings may provide unprecedented prospects in MLL research and give hints for future drug design for some human diseases," Chen said.

Scientists said the research was the fruit of collaboration among at least six labs, including those involving biochemistry and structural biology, at the National Center for Protein Science, a major facility located at the Shanghai Zhangjiang National Innovation Demonstration Zone, where a new integrated national science center will be constructed.

They also conducted diffraction experiments at the Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility, another significant facility in Zhangjiang.

"It's one of the important reasons that we can see the structure clearly," Chen said. (China Daily)

 

[JSCh]

Public Release: 22-Feb-2016
Waterloo vision scientists discover potential treatment for adults with lazy eye
University of Waterloo

IMAGE: Professor Thompson adjusts a transcranial direct current stimulation device on a patient. A new treatment for adults with lazy eye, a condition previously thought to be treatable only in childhood, is... view more

Credit: UWaterloo/Martin Schwalbe

A new treatment for adults with lazy eye, a condition previously thought to be treatable only in childhood, is one step closer as a result of research from the University of Waterloo in Canada and Sun Yat-sen University in China.

Waterloo vision scientist Ben Thompson with collaborators from China have shown that low voltage electric currents can temporarily improve sight in adult patients with lazy eye, or amblyopia.

"Until fairly recently, the prevailing view was that if adults couldn't develop amblyopia, they couldn't be treated for it," says Thompson. "This was the same for anyone with brain-based vision problems - they're often told there's nothing that can be done about their vision loss."

In a proof-of-concept series of experiments, Thompson and his colleagues exposed patients to twenty minutes of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) applied to the surface of the head, directly over the primary visual cortex.

They found the treatment temporarily increased the response of that part of the brain to visual information from the lazy eye. tDCS also improved patients' ability to see low contrast patterns.

Their results were published this month in Scientific Reports, a highly cited Nature publication.

"It's a long held view that adults can't be treated for lazy eye because their brains no longer have the capacity to change," says Thompson. "We demonstrate here that adults do have the capacity, especially when it comes to vision."

Methods such as transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) have recently been shown to increase adult neuroplasticity - the brain's ability to rewire and reorganise itself.

Lazy eye is a loss of vision that originates in the brain. It affects up to three per cent of Canadians and is caused by the presence of unequal images in the two eyes during childhood, typically due to an eye turn or one eye being long sighted.

The unequal input can cause the brain to process information from the weaker eye incorrectly. Unless the brain processing issue is treated, the vision loss remains, even after the problems in the eye are fixed. If left untreated, lazy eye increases a patient's lifetime risk for legal blindness by 50 per cent.

"Amblyopia is an issue here in Canada, but much more so in countries where access to basic vision care for children is challenging," says Thompson.

That said, amblyopia in children is very treatable because their brains are so responsive.

It's a different story for adults whose brains have long passed out of the critical developmental period. Differences in the images seen by each eye that occur in adulthood do not result in amblyopia.

Other research groups have suggested that tDCS might also have beneficial effects in patients with vision loss due to stroke.

Thompson says these initial results demonstrate the proof-of-concept that will allow him and his research group to take the next step towards clinical trials.

"Our ultimate goal is to develop an evidence based treatment that patients can receive right in their eye doctor's office," says Thompson. "We expect there are other primary visual cortex problems that we may be able to address with this method."

###​

Other collaborators include researchers from McGill University, University of Auckland and Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

Waterloo vision scientists discover potential treatment for adults with lazy eye | EurekAlert! Science News

 

[JSCh]

Shrinking 3D Technology for Comfortable Smart Phone Viewing | Business Wire
Using a technique called super multi-view, Chinese researchers have developed a thin display that creates a three-dimensional image without causing viewing discomfort

February 23, 2016 01:22 PM Eastern Standard Time

WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Imagine watching a 3D movie on your smart phone and suddenly getting a headache or even feeling nauseous. Such viewer discomfort is one of the biggest obstacles preventing widespread application of 3D display technology – especially for portable devices whose slim design poses an extra challenge.

Now researchers at the Sun Yan-Sen University, China have developed a new display with comfortable 3D visual effects. The device is based on a “super multi-view technique” which works to reduce viewer discomfort. It also greatly decreases the required number of microdisplays, which makes a compact design possible. The researchers describe their device in a paper in the journal Optics Express, from The Optical Society (OSA).

“There are many causes for 3D-viewing discomfort, but the most substantial one is the vergence-accomodation conflict,” said Lilin Liu, author and an associate professor of the State Key Lab of Optoelectronics Materials and Technology, Sun Yat-Sen University, China. She explained that vergence-accomodation conflict is a mismatch between the point at which the eyes converge on an image and the distance to which they focus when viewing 3D images.

Human eyes are separated by about six centimeters, which means that when we look at an object, the two eyes see slightly different images. Our brain directs both eyes to the same object and the distance at which the eyes’ sight lines cross is technically called “vergence distance.” Meanwhile, our brain adjusts the focus of the lens within each eye to make the image sharp and clear on the retina. The distance to which the eye is focused is called “the accommodative distance.” Failure to converge leads to double images, while mis-accommodation results in blurry images.

In natural viewing, human’s vergence and accommodation responses are correlated with each other and adjust simultaneously. In other words, vergence and accommodation distance are almost always the same — that’s why we can always see an object clearly and comfortably.

Conventional 3D displays try to mimic the natural viewing by creating images with varying binocular difference, which simulates vergence changes in the natural 3D landscape. But the accommodative distance remains unchanged at the display distance, resulting in the so-called vergence-accomodation conflict that causes viewer discomfort.

“Conventional 3D displays usually deliver some views of the displayed spatial spot to a single eye pupil. That is why accommodative distance remains fixed on the display screen and cannot adjust simultaneously as vergence distance does, causing vergence-accomodation conflict,” said Liu.

The team’s solution is to project numerous 2D perspective views to viewpoints with intervals smaller than the pupil diameter of the eye. This means the device can deliver at least two different views to a single eye pupil.

“Our proposed scheme overcomes vergence-accomodation conflict by delivering more than two views to a single eye pupil, making the eyes focus on the displayed image naturally. Also, the prototype in our study is 65-millimeter-thin, and the system could become thinner with improvement in structural elements, which provides a demo for comfortable 3D wearable electronics or portable displays,” said Dongdong Teng, co- author of the paper.

The team’s prototype system consists of 11 elementary projecting units. Each projecting unit is constructed by an organic light-emitting diode (OLED) microdisplay, a rectangular projecting lens, two vertical baffles and a group of gating apertures (liquid crystal panel) attached to the projecting lens. By gating different gating apertures in sequence and refreshing the virtual image of the corresponding microdisplay synchronously, the researchers can obtain dense viewpoints on the display screen.

“Creating a dense arrangement of viewpoints on the display screen is the key to comfortable 3D effect,” Liu noted.

To test viewers’ reactions to the prototype system, eight subjects were asked to observe a displayed 3D image of an apple in the lab environment and no headache or discomfort was reported.

Moreover, as the gating aperture array is adhered to the projecting unit array, the size of the prototypestructure is thin, around 65 millimeters, which is promising for applications in portable devices.

Liu said adjustments to the device could make it even thinner, which is a focus of their future work.

“The novelty and the main merit of our super multi-view system lie in the thin structure. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of a ‘super multi-view system’ with thin structure, which makes it suitable for portable electronics such as smart phones and wearable devices,” Liu said.

Paper: Lilin Liu, Zhiyong Pang, and Dongdong Teng, "Super multi-view three-dimensional display technique for portable devices," Opt. Express 24, 4421-4430 (2016)

Abstract
Portable display devices, such as intelligent telephones and panel PCs, have become parts of modern people’s daily life. Their mainstream display interfaces are based on two-dimensional (2D) images. Although some three-dimensional (3D) technologies have been proposed for portable devices, comfortable visual effects are untouched until now. A super multi-view (SMV) system with comfortable 3D effects, constructed by a group of OLED microdisplay/projecting lens pairs, is proposed in this paper. Through gating different segments of each projecting lens sequentially and refreshing the virtual image of the corresponding microdisplay synchronously, the proposed SMV system greatly decreases the demand on the number of employed microdisplays and at the same time takes a thin optical structure, endowing great potential for portable devices.

© 2016 Optical Society of America​

 

[JSCh]

Chinese Wind Turbine Maker
Is Now World's Largest
Danish firm is second, U.S. is third, in booming market

----------
By Daniel Cusick, ClimateWire on February 23, 2016

©iStock.com​

General Electric Co. has ceded its position as the world’s No. 1 wind turbine manufacturer to a Chinese competitor, according to 2015 market data compiled by Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

Xinjiang Goldwind Science & Technology Co. Ltd. received orders for 7.8 gigawatts of new wind turbines in 2015, exceeding GE, which dropped to No. 3 globally with 5.9 GW of new commissioned capacity, according to BNEF. Vestas Wind Systems A/S of Denmark attracted 7.3 GW of new orders in 2015, solidifying its No. 2 ranking in the global supply chain.

While Goldwind maintains a North American headquarters in Chicago and has provided turbines to several U.S. wind farms, BNEF said that almost all of the company’s recent growth was in the Chinese market, where wind power developers are riding an unprecedented boom. About 29 GW of new capacity came online in China last year alone (ClimateWire, Feb. 2).

David Halligan, CEO of Goldwind Americas, said Goldwind is pleased to be at the forefront of a global wind market that “is growing at an exponential rate.”

“While Goldwind’s anchor is in China, our global aspirations remain strong and we are continuously looking for opportunities across many different geographies,” he said in email.


Continue reading -> Chinese Wind Turbine Maker Is Now World's Largest - Scientific American

 

[JSCh]

Super VOOC in fast lane, fills battery in 15 minutes
February 25, 2016 by Nancy Owano

This week, battery-charging technology carrying a pitch of being especially fast and safe was talked up at the Mobile World Congress. A Chinese smartphone company announced its quick-charge technology, which can deliver low-temperature charging of smartphone batteries.​

Oppo is the company and the new phone-charging technology is called Super VOOC Flash Charge; a presentation at the event showed just how fast charging can be. How fast? Super VOOC Battery tech can fully charge a phone in 15 minutes—it will charge a 2,500mAh battery to 100 percent.

That is pretty impressive as a 15-minute charge appears comfortably short as a painless interruption which one can carry out during any busy day.

(Another important fast-charging player is Qualcomm. They said that in laboratory tests using a 2750mAh battery, a Quick Charge 3.0 enabled device went from 0 percent to 80 percent charge in 35 minutes; Quick Charge is the company's fast charging technology for devices powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon processors.)

PCMag mobile analyst Ajay Kumar made the point too on Tuesday that fast charging is not a new technology; companies like the above-mentioned Qualcomm have their own version of it, but what sets Oppo's VOOC apart is that it is low-voltage. "Most types of fast charge work by pushing out more amps, but VOOC keeps your standard amperage, reducing risk of overheating or battery damage."

The technology works with micro-USB and USB Type-C ports. As Kumar reported, the adapter was designed with military-grade materials and compatibility for micro USB and USB Type-C ports.

How did Oppo pull off this 15-minute feat? Oppo said that "Super VOOC Flash Charge uses a 5V low-voltage pulse-charge algorithm, ensuring a low-temperature charge that's safe for the battery and dynamically regulating the current to charge the phone in the shortest time possible. The all-new algorithm pairs with a customized super battery, as well as a new adapter, cable and connector made using premium, military-grade materials."

Samuel Gibbs of The Guardian talked about the company's technology approach. According to Gibbs, Oppo said the technology was "safer and better for battery longevity because it maintains the voltage at 5V and dynamically adjusts the current to keep the fastest possible charging rate while not damaging the battery."

The circuitry to enable the faster charging is stored within the charger for Oppo's system, said The Guardian. "Oppo's system moves a source of heat, which is hazardous to battery health and causes phones to heat up during charging, to the wall."

PCMag's Kumar reported that Oppo has included a customized battery and software with Super VOOC-enabled devices, allowing them to regulate the current to prevent overheating.
When can we expect to see this technology in the real world? GSMArena said that the company hopes to implement it in Oppo smartphones in the near future.

The company said in its press release that it plans to release a device with Super VOOC Flash Charge in the latter part of the year.

If you are not yet familiar with the name Oppo, it is worth recognizing for its place in the phone world. Natasha Lomas reported last month in TechCrunch that "In the game of thrones that is the Android OEM space, Chinese smartphone maker Oppo's star is rising. It said today it sold 50 million smartphones in the full year 2015—a growth rate of 67 per cent, year over year."

More information: www.oppo.com/en/about-us/press/oppo-unveils-super-fast-15-minute-flash-charge-and-worlds-first-smartsensor-image-sabilization-tech

© 2016 Tech Xplore

 

[JSCh]

China's robotic exoskeleton to be put into production
Source: Xinhua 2016-02-26 18:52:17

CHENGDU, Feb. 26 (Xinhua) -- A China-developed robotic exoskeleton, which can help disabled people to walk again, will be put into production this year, its developer announced Friday.

Chengdu-based Center for Robotics at University of Electronic Science and Technology of China has been developing robotic exoskeleton since 2010, which is a wearable robot that can be clasped on one's waist and legs to help with walking and movement.

The disabled torch bearer Lin Han had worn the robotic exoskeleton at the opening ceremony of the 6th National Special Olympics held in Chengdu last year.

"This new version is more sensitive to instructions thanks to its embedded motion sensors," said Huang Rui from the Center for Robotics.

It can assist those suffer from hemiplegia and limb paralysis with walking, according to Cheng Hong, executive director of the center.

"From mechanical and electric design to software research, all were independently developed by the center," said Cheng. "We hope to see our robotic exoskeleton used as part of medical rehabilitation."

 

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CNOOC Taps First Ultra-Deepwater Gas Discovery in South China Sea

BEIJING, Feb 26 (Reuters) - China's CNOOC Ltd said on Friday it had tapped the country's first ultra-deepwater natural gas discovery in the northwestern part of the South China Sea.

The state-owned offshore oil and gas explorer started to drill the Lingshui 18-1-1 exploration well last October in water depths of 1,688 metres (5,538 feet) and a test of the well in December was a success, the company said in a report published on the website of parent company China National Offshore Oil Corp (www.cnooc.com.cn).

An "ultra-deep" well is categorized as one more than 1,500 metres under the sea.

The report didn't give any estimate of gas flows at Lingshui 18-1-1, but said the discovery has been certified by the Ministry of Land & Resources.

It's located next to another deepsea gas find Lingshui 17-2, which has certified proven reserves exceeding 100 billion cubic metres as reported by the state media a year ago.

CNOOC deployed the country's flagship deepwater rig, the "Haiyang Shiyou 981", to drill the well, the report said.

(Reporting by Chen Aizhu; Editing by Christian Schmollinger)

- See more at: NEWS  |  CNOOC Taps First Ultra-Deepwater Gas Discovery in South China Sea  |  Rigzone

 

[JSCh]

China builds underground lab studying "origins of elements"
Source: Xinhua 2016-03-03 16:02:09

CHENGDU, March 3 (Xinhua) -- The world's deepest subterranean lab in southwest China is building another underground space that will block cosmic rays, helping scientists trace the origin of elements.

Jinping Underground Laboratory, which is 2,400 meters deep in a mountain in Sichuan Province, has begun building a nuclear astrophysics lab, the China Institute of Atomic Energy told Xinhua.

This arm of physics is a frontier science that studies nuclear reactions within stars, the process that creates many elements. Research into this area provides insight into stars' evolution and the origins of elements.

"The lab will offer the world a new top-class platform for conducting precise measurement on nuclear astrophysics," said Liu Weiping, vice dean of the institute.

Researchers hope to use the facility to explore the birth of heavy elements by measuring neutron source reactions, according to Liu.

Scientists say cosmic rays are known to have disrupted previous observations. This new lab will provide a "clean" space for a number of physical and cosmologic experiments, including those concerns with the search for "dark matter."

The facility opened in December 2010 and was expanded in 2014.

World's deepest lab targets neutrinos - physicsworld.com
Feb 23, 2016

Going underground: the China Jinping Underground Laboratory
An international group of researchers has issued a "letter of intent" for a new neutrino experiment to be built at the China Jinping Underground Laboratory (CJPL). The scientists believe that the proposed Jinping Neutrino Experiment would measure solar and geoneutrinos better than any other facility in the world, thanks to its extremely low level of background radiation.

CJPL is located under a mountain – with about 2400 m of rock cover – in China's south-western Sichuan province. Completed in 2010, it is currently the deepest underground lab in the world, and hosts two dark-matter experiments: CDEX and PandaX. Work began in 2014 to expand CJPL so that it has room for four more experimental chambers – each 12 m wide and 130 m long. The expansion is expected to be complete by the end of this year.

Deep detector
The new letter of intent has been authored by scientists at Tsinghua University, along with others elsewhere in China, Germany and the US, and outlines the science that the Jinping Neutrino Experiment would carry out. Costing around 300m yuan (£32m) to design and build, it will feature 4000 tonnes of liquid scintillator or water-based liquid scintillator, and will aim to obtain precise measurements of the electron neutrino fluxes generated by the Sun. Although previous observations have shown that neutrinos oscillate from one flavour to another, John Beacom, a theorist at Ohio State University and a member of the proposal, says that current measurements could be more refined to offer "tremendously exciting" results.

The experiment would also study electron antineutrinos generated in the Earth's mantle and crust, which could be used to measure the amount and distribution of uranium and thorium inside of the Earth. Compared with other geoneutrino detectors, CJPL is located far away from nuclear power plants, which could affect the measurements. Shaomin Chen, a physicist at Tsinghua, says that the researchers will now place a small detector at CJPL to carry out a preliminary study. If all goes well, Chen says they could design and build the detector within the next five years.

A preprint of the letter is available on the arXiv server.