China Science & Technology Forum

[cirr]

AUG 21, 2016, 21:00 ET

GPT Announces New Developments in Heterogeneous System Architecture (HSA) at HSA Foundation Global Summit

Releases First Silicon Based on its HSA Enabled IP Core and Unveils Machine Learning Open Source Project

BEIJING, Aug. 21, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- General Processor Technologies (GPT), a wholly owned subsidiary of China-based Hua Xia GPT, a leading licensor of processor IP for heterogeneous systems, announced today that its licensable IP technology has been implemented in silicon and is already passing conformance tests for HSA (Heterogeneous System Architecture). The company also unveiled a new machine learning deep neural network open source project designed to further proliferate HSA technologies.

The announcement will be highlighted at the HSA Foundation 2016 Global Summit being held in Beijing. HSA is a standardized platform design with wide industry support which unlocks the performance and power efficiency of the parallel computing engines found in most modern electronic devices. The HSA Summit examines integrated circuit technologies and industry applications and solutions with an emphasis on the "CPU +" era and the future of heterogeneous processing technologies.

IP Cores Designed for HSA
Historically GPT has developed IP specifically for the China market. The company recently announced a range of new IP licensing offerings along with an enhanced geographical licensing program. With the company-wide adoption of HSA standards, GPT now licenses IP worldwide. All GPT processors include HSA support and the company is now offering world-class HSA-enabled processors to its customers.

The HSA enabled IP core which is sampling now in silicon is a first implementation of GPT's 3-in-1 Unity architecture designed for multidimensional signal processing including image and video processing.

"Rather than designing for fixed size vectors, the length is architecturally specified, allowing for forward and backward software compatibility. Combined with a unique, very low-power out-of-order execution pipeline, it allows for multiple threads of control to efficiently execute while the vector unit processes data," said Dr. Mayan Moudgill, CTO of GPT.

"It is exciting to see the new IP core passing PRM HSA conformance tests. Targeting industrial, IoT, ADAS, and embedded systems, the core is optimized for low-power operation and is available for licensing worldwide," said Kerry Li, Chairman of GPT.

ML-HSA Open Source Project
The new Open Source project targets machine learning and deep neural networks (ML-HSA). The project will provide a freely available library in the form of HSAIL – the HSA assembly language – that any compliant HSA platform can finalize and execute. The implementation will be optimized for GPT's previously sponsored open source gccbrig project that provides for compilation (finalization) to any platform supporting gcc.

"Over the last four years the HSA Foundation has developed the hardware and software infrastructure to support heterogeneous systems. The ecosystem for developers is available with open source implementations of compilers, runtimes, and more. The Foundation is also committed to providing applications that enable portability across HSA platforms. I'm excited that GPT is involved in both the HSA developer and applications programming ecosystem," said Dr. John Glossner, HSAF President and GPT CEO.

"Parmance is delighted to continue collaborating with GPT on ML-HSA. Machine learning algorithms are used in many applications and HSA platforms are excellent targets for these algorithms due to the highly parallel execution capability of most agents. Optimizing for low power DSPs and ISPs is of particular interest", said Dr. Pekka Jääskeläinen, CEO of Parmance.

"The HSA Foundation is a strong supporter of Open Source software with tools, runtime, compilers, and open specifications all freely available from the Foundation's website and GitHub accounts. HSA already supports multiple languages such as C++, Python, and OpenCL. With compliant systems now shipping, providing support for important classes of algorithms will enable performance benefits to applications programmers," said Greg Stoner, Executive Director and Chair of the Board of the HSA Foundation.

About GPT
General Processor Technologies (GPT) is the US division of Huaxia General Processor Technologies Inc. GPT designs and licenses embedded HSA-compatible processors for use world-wide. Best known for building multithreaded vector Digital Signal Processors (DSP) for wireless communications, GPT also licenses cores for use in machine vision, Internet of Things (IoT), Machine-to-Machine (M2M), consumer electronics, and deep learning. GPT's patent-pending Unity architecture allows customers to optimize cores for a range of applications and easily integrates into heterogeneous systems providing power-efficient computing and software reuse. http://www.GeneralProcessorTech.com

About the HSA Foundation
The HSA (Heterogeneous System Architecture) Foundation is a non-profit consortium of SoC IP vendors, OEMs, Academia, SoC vendors, OSVs and ISVs, whose goal is making programming for parallel computing easy and pervasive. HSA members are building a heterogeneous computing ecosystem, rooted in industry standards, which combines scalar processing on the CPU with parallel processing on the GPU, while enabling high bandwidth access to memory and high application performance with low power consumption. HSA defines interfaces for parallel computation using CPU, GPU and other programmable and fixed function devices, while supporting a diverse set of high-level programming languages, and creating the foundation for next-generation, general-purpose computing. http://www.hsafoundation.com

About Parmance
Parmance, based in Tampere, Finland, provides a wide variety of software engineering services – some of these include compiler development, runtime development and performance engineering. The company's specialists have extensive expertise with heterogeneous parallel computing, processor architectures, instruction-set simulators, and compilers. For more information, log on to www.parmance.com.

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-rele...t-hsa-foundation-global-summit-300316171.html

@Bussard Ramjet

 

[Three_Kingdoms]

Potential Alzheimer’s breakthrough by Hong Kong scientists restores memory of lab-mice


Hong Kong researchers have made what could be a major breakthrough in the fight against Alzheimer’s disease, by successfully restoring the memory of the mice affected by dementia, by injecting them with a protein

Announcing the result, professor Nancy Ip, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology University (HKUST), said it will require at least ten years to develop a human treatment from the protein, which they found can stop a harmful substance from damaging the patients’ brain.

Alzheimer’s disease, a major cause of dementia, affects around 80,000 Hongkongers and 9 million individuals in China..

Alzheimer’s disease linked to high blood sugar; green tea slows its progression

“Unlike existing treatments that can only deter and contain the deterioration of the conditions, this is the first breakthrough that addresses the root of the problem of Alzheimer’s disease,” said Ip.

“The next step will be to translate the findings from the mouse study into clinical treatments for human. I would be very happy if it can happen in ten years.”

Alzheimer’s disease causes dementia, which progressively damages brain functions and leads to memory loss, cognition problems and physical difficulties. Patients with severe forms of the illness rely heavily on carers and could die as a result of the condition.
In Hong Kong, the Alzheimer’s Disease Association estimates that the costs associated with dementia amounted to HK$25.6 billion last year.

Around the globe, the number of Alzheimer’s sufferers is projected to rise from 46.8 million to 131.5 million by 2025 amid the trend of an ageing population, potentially having a catastrophic impact to the health care system around the globe.

Grilled and fried food may raise Alzheimer’s risk, study finds

In a three-year study led by researchers in the local university in Sai Kung, laboratory tests proved the natural protein that affects immune function, known as IL-33, was effective in eliminating a harmful substance damaging the central nervous system of the brain.

The researchers then tested the effectiveness of the protein on hundreds of laboratory-bred mice that were genetically altered to suffer dementia-like symptoms.

The mice were then placed under a fear test inside a box that gave them electric shock if they moved around.

Those mice with no treatment kept walking around in the box as they had forgotten their actions would trigger electric shock.

But those injected with the protein would freeze on the spot - showing they remembered the fear of pain.

“The study showed that the injections of the proteins have restored the memory of these mice to a normal level,” said Ip. “Same doses were given to elder mice suffering more advanced conditions. The effect is proven to be the same.”

But the researchers have only observed the conditions of the mice for a week. It will require further study on the sustainability of the treatment, its side effects, and to determine the correct dose to treat different levels of seriousness of the disease, Ip said.

The study, carried out in collaboration with the University of Glasgow in the UK and Zhejian University in China, has been published in scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA.

Chinese University’s professor Timony Kwok Chi-yiu, an expert in dementia, believed the research has offered a positive sign in treating Alzheimer’s.

“There is potential for this study to develop a cure,” Kwok said, but he stressed it would require a clinical study to determine its effect on humans, since there were some previous breakthroughs in animals that could not be translated into human patients.



HKUST Develops Tiny Lasers that Opens New Era for Light-based Computing
22-08-2016


Researchers at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) have fabricated microscopically-small lasers directly on silicon, enabling the future-generation microprocessors to run faster and less power-hungry – a significant step towards light-based computing.

The innovation, made by Prof Kei-may Lau, Fang Professor of Engineering and Chair Professor of the Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering, in collaboration with the University of California, Santa Barbara; Sandia National Laboratories and Harvard University, marks a major breakthrough for the semiconductor industry and well beyond.

Silicon forms the basis of everything from solar cells to the integrated circuits at the heart of our modern electronic gadgets. However, the crystal lattice of silicon and of typical laser materials could not match up, making it impossible to integrate the two materials until now, when Prof Lau’s group managed to integrate subwavelength cavities — the essential building blocks of their tiny lasers — onto silicon, allowing them to create and demonstrate high-density on-chip light-emitting elements. The finding was recently published as the cover story on Applied Physics Letters.

“These whispering gallery mode lasers are extremely attractive light source for on-chip optical communications, data processing and chemical sensing applications,” Prof Lau said. “Putting lasers on microprocessors boosts their capabilities and allows them to run at much lower powers – a big step towards photonics and electronics integration on the silicon platform and a key solution to the next-generation green information technology.”

For years, photonics had been the most energy-efficient and cost-effective method to transmit large volumes of data over long distances, now with these new silicon-based integrated lasers, photonics may be able to use for short-distance data transmission as well, which is set to greatly enhance the speed of data communication.

In fabricating these “whispering gallery mode lasers”, Prof Lau’s team etched nano-patterns directly onto the silicon, so as to confine the defects of its crystal lattices while ensuring the necessary quantum confinement of electrons within quantum dots grown on this template. Her team then use optical pumping – a process that uses light to raise or “pump” electrons from a lower energy level to a higher one, to demonstrate that the devices they created were able to operate as lasers.

These tiny lasers measure only 1 micron in diameter, and are 1,000 times shorter in length and 1 million times smaller in area than those currently used.





HKUST Finds a New Material System that Opens a New Era for Organic Solar Cells
01-08-2016


Researchers at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) have discovered a novel material system that would revolutionize the future development of Organic Solar Cells (OSCs). OSCs based on this new material system have demonstrated ultrafast and efficient charge separation despite a nearly zero charge separation driving force, meaning that the more environmentally-friendly OSCs may be able to perform as good as inorganic solar cells in the future.

The breakthrough, discovered by a research team led by Prof Henry He Yan from the Department of Chemistry, was published in Nature Energy in June.

OSC is a promising third-generation solar technology. However, its charge separation – an essential step for solar cells to generate electricity, required a significant driving force – typically 0.3 eV or higher, which had been a fundamental limitation for OSC’s development as the driving force inevitably causes a large voltage loss in OSC and limits its maximum achievable efficiency.

Now Prof Yan’s group may have found a solution for this problem which researchers have sought to tackle over the past two decades. In collaboration with Prof Feng Gao at Linkoping University, Sweden, and Prof Kenan Gundogdu at North Carolina State University, USA, the group demonstrated an ultrafast charge separation in their OSC built on a new material system, which occurred in a time-scale of between 0.1 to 3 picosecond, despite a near-zero driving force.

This breakthrough is set to remap the future of OSC. Currently, the best-performing OSC only has an efficiency of between 12 and 13 per cent, but with the required driving force reduced to near zero, its maximum efficiency could increase to between 20 – 25 per cent, a level comparable to the most advanced inorganic solar cells nowadays. The finding has prompted questions on how charge transfer and recombination occur in OSCs, it may also spark a new wave of studies on the photophysics processes in organic semiconductor materials.

This is the third major achievement by Prof Yan’s group over the past two years (with the previous two published atNature Comm., 2014, 5293 and Nature Energy, 2016, 15027). In 2014, the group identified a new method to expedite the development of OSC materials. That method eventually led to the creation of a record-efficient OSC developed via environmentally-friendly processing method in early 2016. But Prof Yan said the team’s latest achievement is even more important than the previous two. “We now have reasons to be very optimistic about the future of OSC, as our finding completely redefines OSC’s maximum potential in both fundamental studies and industrial applications,” he said. “We hope to set up a major research platform on this very exciting and rapidly-developing front with the help from colleagues of the chemistry, physics and energy field.”

Prof Yan graduated from Peking University and obtained his PhD at Northwestern University in 2004. Before joining HKUST in 2012, he led a research group at Polyera Corporation – a leading company in the organic electronics industry.

 

[JSCh]

World's biggest telescope meets world's second fastest supercomputer
International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research

A prototype part of the software system to manage data from the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) telescope has run on the world’s second fastest supercomputer in China.

Chinese Supercomputer Tianhe-2. Image Credit: Prof. Yutong Lu​

The complete system, currently being designed by an international consortium, will process raw observations of distant stars and galaxies and turn them into a form that can be analysed by astronomers around the world.

“It is known as the SKA Science Data Processor, or the ‘brain’ of the telescope”, said Professor Andreas Wicenec, head of data intensive astronomy at the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR).

The successful deployment of the prototype science data processor execution framework on the Tianhe-2 supercomputer was conducted by an international team led by Professor Tao An from Shanghai Astronomical Observatory in China and Professor Wicenec in Western Australia.

The execution framework provides the control and monitoring environment to execute millions of tasks, consuming and producing millions of data items on many thousands of individual computers.

This is the scale of processing required for every single SKA observation obtained within six to 12 hours.

Professor Wicenec said the novel execution framework of the science data processor is “data activated”, meaning individual data items are wrapped in an active piece of software that automatically triggers the applications needed to process it.

“Whenever a data item is ready, that’s triggering the next task—the task is not running idle, waiting for anything,” he said. Professor An said the prototype was initially run on 500 compute nodes of the supercomputer and then extended to 1000 nodes.

“The next step is to ramp up the number of individual items we’re deploying and then increase the number of compute nodes to what we are expecting for the SKA computer, which is about 8500,” he said.

Professor Wicenec said the system is now running 66,000 items and the next stage will be a few million.

“Then we’ll run between 50 and 60 million items on 8500 or 10,000 nodes,” he said.

Tianhe-2 was deployed on National Super Computing Center in Guangzhou, China, which has 16,000 computer nodes and can perform quadrillions of calculations per second.

It was the world’s fastest supercomputer from June 2013 until June 2016.

“The most important part is the co-design and co-optimisation of SKA data processing software set and supercomputers such as Tianhe-2, preparing for the faster computers in a few years from now,” Tianhe-2 director Professor Yutong Lu said.

This work was carried out as part of the Science Data Processor work package for the SKA, which is led by the University of Cambridge.

The SKA is arguably the world’s largest science project, with the low frequency part of the telescope alone set to have more than a quarter of a million antennas facing the sky.

Each of the two SKA telescopes will produce enough data to fill a typical laptop hard drive every second.

FURTHER INFORMATION
The International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) is a joint venture between Curtin University and The University of Western Australia with support and funding from the State Government of Western Australia. ICRAR’s Data Intensive Astronomy team is leading the international effort to address the challenges surrounding the flow of data within the SKA observatory.

The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project is an international effort to build the world’s largest radio telescope, led by the SKA Organisation based at the Jodrell Bank Observatory near Manchester. The SKA will conduct transformational science to improve our understanding of the Universe and the laws of fundamental physics, monitoring the sky in unprecedented detail and mapping it hundreds of times faster than any current facility.

The SKA is not a single telescope, but a collection of telescopes or instruments, called an array, to be spread over long distances. Construction of the telescope is set to start in 2018, with early science observations in 2020.

Artist’s impression of the low frequency antennas to be built in Australia as part of the Square Kilometre Array. Credit: Australia SKA Office​

World’s biggest telescope meets world’s second fastest supercomputer - ICRAR

 

[JSCh]

Chinese unmanned underwater vehicle sets a new deep-sea diving record: 10,767 meters down
(People's Daily Online) 17:21, August 23, 2016

A Chinese unmanned underwater vehicle dived to a depth of 10,767 meters, setting a new deep-sea diving record.

China’s independently developed Haidou unmanned underwater vehicle became China’s first autonomous underwater vehicle for scientific research to dive to a depth of more than 10,000 meters, reaching a maximum depth of 10,767 meters, the Chinese Academy of Sciences announced on August 23rd at a press conference. This achievement makes China the third country, behind only Japan and the US, to send unmanned vessels to depths greater than 10,000 meters.

This incredible feat was reached five times during the maiden voyage of the scientific research ship Tansuo-1, developed by China to study the deep seas. During the voyage, Haidou completed two dives and three dives were completed by the deep-sea submersibles Tianya, a deep-sea lander, and The Yuanwei Experiment, a deep sea elevator used to study the seabed. Haidou, Tianya, Haijiao, and The Yuanwei Experiment are all deep-sea equipment developed independently by China.

 

[JSCh]

Chinese IC design firm unveils 64-core supercomputer processor
Source: Xinhua | 2016-08-24 12:08:35 | Editor: huaxia

FT-2000/64 CPU,designed by Phytium Technology Co. Ltd, a Chinese integrated circuit design firm. (Xinhua Photo)

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 23 (Xinhua) -- Phytium Technology Co. Ltd., a Chinese integrated circuit (IC) design firm, has unveiled its latest product, a 64-core central processing unit (CPU), and a related prototype computer server at a technology event in Silicon Valley.

The company, based in Tianjin, northern China, claims that its FT-2000/64 CPU, with 4.8 billion transistors on a die 25.20 millimeters in width and 25.38 millimeters in length within a chip package 55 millimeters in width and 55 millimeters in length, is the first of its kind adopting the Advanced RISC Machine (ARM) architecture.

As RISC stands for reduced instruction set computer, the ARM architecture results in processors, as the heart of computers, with relatively less number of transistors and therefore reduced cost, heat and power use.

At Hot Chips, an annual symposium on high performance computer chips co-sponsored by the U.S. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), in Cupertino, northern California, from Sunday through Tuesday, engineers from Phytium said the new CPU chip, with 64-bit arithmetic compatible with ARMv8 instructions, is able to perform 512 billion floating-point operations per second (FLOPS) at base frequency of 2.0 GHz and on 100 watts of power dissipation.

While the architecture is licensed from ARM Holdings, a British company, Phytium has designed its own cores, known as FTC661s, which are the units that read and execute program instructions, such as add, move data and branch, to be integrated into the chip, enabling it to run multiple instructions at the same time in what is called parallel computing.

One of major CPU developers in China, Phytium's previous CPU series integrate either 4 or 16 cores.

Shying off comparing its products with more typical complex instruction set computing (CISC) x86 processors, such as those manufactured by Intel Corporation, one of the world's largest chip makers based on revenue, Phytium says the FT-2000/64 is so far the best in the ARM category.

According to a sales respresentative, Phytium has provided thousands of CPUs to system builders that supply equipment for government institutions, telecommunication businesses, banks and public utilities in China, and its latest chip is expected to be used in high-throughput and high-performance servers.

 

[cirr]

China funds 18 bln yuan on science projects

Source: Xinhua 2016-08-24 16:40:04

BEIJING, Aug. 24 (Xinhua) -- The National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) has approved funding for 38,160 projects this year, with a total investment of more than 18 billion yuan (2.8 billion U.S.dollars).

With a budget of 24.8 billion yuan for 2016, the NSFC received 177,551 applications as of August 16, it announced on Tuesday.

For programs exploring scientific frontiers, each has received an average 600,000 yuan investment. Those designated priority areas, such as quantum information technology, cosmic ray detection, and global environmental change, were each financed with 2.8 million yuan on average.

China has used its science fund to further develop basic science research and elevate the reputation of its academic papers, cutting-edge programs and research achievements.

During 2011 to 2015, the science fund financed nearly 200,000 programs, with around 88.8 billion yuan from state revenue and more than 1.7 billion yuan from other sources, according to NSFC figures.

To prevent misuse of funds, the foundation has issued regulations to ensure all the money is used appropriately.

 

[bobsm]

Chinese scientists have recently made a breakthrough in quantum computing

Aug 24, 2016

Pan Jianwei and his colleagues from the University of Science and Technology of China achieved the generation, manipulation and detection of atomic spin entanglement by using ultra-cold atoms in optical lattices, which is a great step towards the scalable quantum information computation and quantum simulation based on ultra-cold atoms.

According to previous research, ultra-cold atoms in optical lattices offer a great promise to generate entangled states for scalable quantum information processing owing to the inherited long coherence time and controllability over a large number of particles.

The process of generating entangled states has three stages. Pan and his colleagues have finished the first stage, which is to produce regularly arranged entangled atom-bits pairs.

"We have compared our work with others in the world. We found that other scientists are capable of produce many atoms, but they cannot produce entangled pairs or using quantum manipulation to control them, or measure the quantum state. We are the first team in the world that have managed to produce entangled atom pairs, manipulate them and measure the quantum state. So we are leading the world in this area," said professor Yuan Zhensheng from the University of Science and Technology of China.

The new breakthrough is also seen as a great step towards faster quantum computing.

"Quantum computer is much faster than the digital computer we are using right now. The goal of our research is to make the quantum computing upgradable and to put it in a bigger mechanism so that it will be usable. The result of our research can be used in faster quantum computing," said Yuan.

"Nature Physics," an authoritative academic journal, said that their work "paves the way to create larger highly entangled states, such as 1D and 2D cluster states, the main resource for measurement based quantum computing".

Quantum computing studies theoretical computation systems (quantum computer) that make direct use of quantum-mechanical phenomena, such as superposition and entanglement, to perform operations on data.


http://newscontent.cctv.com/NewJsp/news.jsp?fileId=371791

 

[JSCh]

Tired Of Rush Hour Traffic? A Machine Could Fix That
A deep reinforcement learning algorithm could optimally plan traffic signals and help to reduce congestion, according to a new study.

AsianScientist (Aug. 24, 2016) -- A study from China published in the IEEE/CAA Journal of Automatica Sinica suggests that machines can learn how to plan traffic signals to reduce wait times and make traffic queues shorter.

In traffic signaling, it’s the pattern of traffic light switches that minimizes the time drivers spend waiting in a queue or the length of that queue. Automating traffic control is notoriously tricky because it involves two challenging tasks: modeling traffic flow and then optimizing it.

Much like the reward system in our brain, reinforcement learning algorithms operate by determining what set of actions are most beneficial to a system in a given state. In video games, for example, these steps are the strategic moves a player must make to earn the highest possible score.

Inspired by how the human brain works, Lv Yisheng and colleagues at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Tsinghua University used special algorithms called neural networks to search for hidden patterns in sets of data. When combined with reinforcement learning, this technique effectively reduces the space a machine must search through, and the computational time it takes, as it seeks the best solution.

Interestingly, when deployed on a virtual four-way traffic intersection with four lanes heading east-west and four heading north-south, the deep reinforcement learning algorithm outperformed a conventional reinforcement learning algorithm.

Not only were there shorter lines and a better balance of traffic in both directions, over the course of a full day, more than 1,000 fewer vehicles came to a full stop. In the end, the average delay was cut by 14 percent, with vehicles spending 13 seconds less in traffic during peak morning hours.

Deep reinforcement learning algorithms aren’t quite ready to hit the streets, the researchers say, but they are helping make real-world traffic scenarios a lot less complicated, which could pave the way toward a new understanding of how traffic flows work.

The article can be found at: Li et al. (2016) Traffic Signal Timing via Deep Reinforcement Learning.


http://www.asianscientist.com/2016/08/tech/machine-learning-traffic-lights/

 

[JSCh]

Crystal Unclear: Why Might This Uncanny Crystal Change Laser Design?
August 26, 2016

Contact: Chad Boutin
301-975-4261

Laser applications may benefit from crystal research by scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and China’s Shandong University. They have discovered a potential way to sidestep longstanding difficulties with making the crystals that are a crucial part of laser technology. But the science behind their discovery has experts scratching their heads.

The findings, published today in Science Advances, suggest that the relatively large crystals used to change several properties of light in lasers – changes that are crucial for making lasers into practical tools – might be created by stacking up far smaller, rod-shaped microcrystals that can be grown easily and cheaply.

So far, the team’s microcrystals outperform conventional crystals in some ways, suggesting that harnessing them could signal the end of a long search for a fast, economical way to develop large crystals that would otherwise be prohibitively expensive and time-consuming to create. But the microcrystals also challenge conventional scientific theory as to why they perform as they do.


Continue -> http://www.nist.gov/pml/div684/why-might-this-uncanny-crystal-change-laser-design.cfm


Paper: Y. Ren, X. Zhao, L. Deng, and E.W. Hagley. Ambient-condition growth of high-pressure phase centrosymmetric crystalline KDP microstructures for optical second harmonic generation. Science Advances, 26 August 2016. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1600404.

 

[cirr]

World beating FL-10 wind tunnel operational !!

Infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure!

http://www.cannews.com.cn/epaper/zghkb/2016/08/27/A01/story/1125149.shtml

@Bussard Ramjet

 

[JSCh]

Irish Researchers have joined international team to make a breakthrough in fundamental physics
29.08.16

An international team of researchers have for the first time, discovered that in a very high magnetic field an electron with no mass can acquire a mass. Understanding why elementary particles e.g. electrons, photons, neutrinos have a mass is a fundamental question in Physics and an area of intense debate. This discovery by Prof Stefano Sanvito, Trinity College Dublin and collaborators in Shanghai was published in the prestigious journal Nature Communications this month.

While the applications of this discovery remain to be seen, this represents a significant breakthrough in fundamental physics. It could inspire work in high-energy physics, such as the collision experiments carried out in particle accelerators like CERN. This is the third joint publication between the group in Trinity and Prof. Faxian Xiu at Fudan University in Shanghai, who approached Prof Sanvito to provide theory support for their experimental activity based on his previous publications and international reputation in the field of theoretical physics.

Prof Stefano Sanvito, Principal Investigator at the Science Foundation Ireland funded AMBER (Advanced Materials and BioEngineering Research) centre based at Trinity and the CRANN Institute and Professor in Trinity’s School of Physics said, “This is a very exciting breakthrough because until now, nobody has ever discovered an object whose mass can be switched on or off by applying an external stimulus. Every physical object has a mass, which is a measure of the object’s resistance to a change in its direction or speed, once a force is applied. While we can easily push a light-mass shopping trolley, we cannot move a heavy-mass 6-wheel lorry by simply pushing. However, there are some examples in Nature of objects not having a mass. These include photons, the elementary particles discovered by Einstein responsible for carrying light, and neutrinos, produced in the sun as a result of thermonuclear reactions. We have demonstrated for the first time one way in which mass can be generated in a material. In principle the external stimulus that enabled this, the magnetic field, could be replaced with some other stimulus and perhaps applied long-term in the development of more sophisticated sensors or actuators. It is impossible to say what this could mean, but like any fundamental discovery in physics, the importance is in its discovery.”

He continued, “It has been very satisfying to continue to work with Prof Xiu in Shanghai. While his group are experts in growing and characterizing materials such as ZrTe5 which are very difficult to make, my group has the expertise in the theoretical interpretation. The measurements were carried out in Fudan and at the Wuhan National High Magnetic Field Center in China, while the Dublin team provided the theoretical explanation for the finding. This has been a very fruitful collaboration and we have a number of other publications in progress”.

The team studied what happened to the current passing through the exotic material zirconium pentatelluride (ZrTe5) when exposed to a very high magnetic field. Measuring a current in a high magnetic field is a standard way of characterising the material’s electronic structure. In the absence of a magnetic field the current flows easily through ZrTe5. This is because in ZrTe5 the electrons responsible for the current have no mass. However, when a magnetic field of 60 Tesla is applied (a million times more intense than the earth’s magnetic field) the current is drastically reduced and the electrons acquire a mass. An intense magnetic field in ZrTe5 transforms slim and fast electrons into fat and slow ones.

http://ambercentre.ie/news/single/i...-international-team-to-make-a-breakthrough-in

Paper: Yanwen Liu et al, Zeeman splitting and dynamical mass generation in Dirac semimetal ZrTe5, Nature Communications (2016). DOI: 10.1038/ncomms12516

 

[JSCh]

U.S. developers have the numbers, but China and Russia have the skills
A report from HackerRank finds that while the U.S. and India have lots of developers, Chinese and Russian programmers are the most talented

By Paul Krill

While the United States and India may have lots of programmers, China and Russia have the most talented developers according to a study by HackerRank, which administers coding tests to developers worldwide.

The study looked at the results of 1.4 million of HackerRank's coding test submissions, called "challenges," during the last few years. "According to our data, China and Russia score as the most talented developers. Chinese programmers outscore all other countries in mathematics, functional programming, and data structures challenges, while Russians dominate in algorithms, the most popular and most competitive arena," said Ritika Trikha, a blogger at HackerRank.

The United States and India provide the majority of competitors on HackerRank but only manage to rank 28th and 31st, respectively. "If we held a hacking Olympics today, our data suggests that China would win the gold, Russia would take home a silver, and Poland would nab the bronze," Trikha said. "Though they certainly deserve credit for making a showing, the United States and India have some work ahead of them before they make it into the top 25."


Continue -> U.S. developers have the numbers, but China and Russia have the skills | InfoWorld

 

[ahojunk]

China to build 40 manufacturing innovation centers by 2025
Source: Xinhua 2016-08-30 21:17:09

BEIJING, Aug. 30 (Xinhua) -- China will set up around 40 national manufacturing innovation centers by 2025, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said on Tuesday.

The centers will be devoted to information technology, intelligent manufacturing, new materials and biomedicine. Around 15 will be established by 2020.

The MIIT has promised to improve the intellectual property management system to promote cooperation and profit sharing between centers.

To build a better manufacturing sector, China came up with the "Made in China 2025" plan last year, to shift the country away from low-end manufacturing to more value-added production.

China's value-added industrial output grew 6.1 percent in 2015, lower than the 8.3-percent growth in 2014. Manufacturing output expanded 7 percent, 2.4 percentage points lower than the previous year.

 

[bobsm]

CAS researchers build 3D printed self-driving mini vehicle with deforming liquid metal wheels
Aug 31, 2016 | By Alec

Who says metal needs to be solid to be functional? A team of researchers from the Institute of Physical and Chemical Technology (of CAS, the Chinese Academy of Sciences) and Tsinghua University have just proven that the opposite can be true as well. As part of their studies on wire oscillation effects and liquid metals, they have harnessed a liquid metal jumping phenomenon to build a self-driven miniature vehicle with deforming liquid metal wheels.

This is a huge breakthrough that will definitely speed up the development of flexible machinery and robotics, while it can also be used to develop drug delivery systems and control switches for electrical, mechanical and optical systems. While liquid metal machines generally rely on pure liquid materials, this Chinese breakthrough actually combines solid and liquid metals, with the metal particles triggering the jumping effect. This is perfectly illustrated by this cool little metal vehicle, that is coated in a functional magnetic layer and features liquid metal wheels that push themselves forward through this jumping phenomenon.

This remarkable breakthrough has already been published in numerous sources. In their paper ‘Liquid Metal Machine Triggered Violin-like Wire Oscillator’, published in the Advanced Science journal, the researchers reported on the unusual self-oscillation effect that their blend of liquid and solid metals exhibited. When treated copper wire touched the metal liquid containing aluminum particles, the wire was quickly swallowed into the liquid blob. The blob subsequently started shuffling back and forth over the surface of the liquid metal manufacturing machine – just like a harp stick moving over the strings while playing music.

'Liquid Metal Machine Triggered Violin-like Wire Oscillator'

What’s more, stainless steel wires can also trigger this oscillation behavior through AM and FM manipulation. The underlying mechanism beneath this weird phenomenon is essentially the reaction of the aluminum and alkali solution to the ends of the liquid metal wires. The dynamic coupling of copper, liquid metal, electrolytes and hydrogen essentially causes rhythmic traction.

The researchers further elaborated on their discovery in the paper ‘Jumping Liquid Metal Droplet in Electrolyte Triggered by Solid Metal Particles’, published in Applied Physics Letters. As they explained, the stationary solution would begin to jump up and down and leave a series of footprints around by adding solid metal particles to a solution containing metal droplets. They discovered that when the metal particles touch the surface of the liquid metal, the electric field on the surface is significantly enhanced and produces hydrogen through electrolysis. Hydrogen bubbles are formed at the bottom and continue to adsorb and grow into a ‘gas spring’, which provides the necessary thrust. Aside from the galvanic effect between the liquid and solid metals, this process is supported by the microstructure differences between the two materials – which leads to charge accumulation.

Jumping Liquid Metal Droplet in Electrolyte Triggered by Solid Metal Particles

The Chinese researchers are currently working hard to develop various applications for this discovery, and actually showcased a potential a drug delivery system in a paper entitled ‘Self-Propelled Liquid Metal Motors Steered by Magnetic or Electrical Field for Drug Delivery’, a 2016 cover story in Journal of Materials Chemistry B (4, 5349). In that paper, they described how they could harness the ‘jumping mechanism’ with an ferromagnetic nickel layer embedded into the liquid metal. This allows them to gain control over the mechanism, allowing them to start, stop, steer, and accelerate the behavior.

Self-Propelled Liquid Metal Motors Steered by Magnetic or Electrical Field for Drug Delivery

What’s more, they also developed a kind of flexible deformable ‘wheels’ that drive a miniature vehicle that is 3D printed in plastic and metal. In the created electrical field, the ‘wheel’ rotates and deforms – driving the vehicle forward and even allowing for acceleration. Currently reaching speeds of 25 mm per second, it’s a concept that can definitely be transferred to more complex applications.

Liquid Metal Wheeled Small Vehicle for Cargo Delivery

While this innovation is thus still under development, the CAS team led by Liu Jing has realized a huge breakthrough. It is the result of liquid metal research that has been ongoing for more than ten years, with an eye on chip cooling, advanced manufacturing and electronic, biomedical and flexible machinery applications. The research is partly funded by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, with liquid metal being seen as a key frontier technology for future breakthroughs.

http://www.3ders.org/articles/20160...hicle-with-deforming-liquid-metal-wheels.html

 

[JSCh]

Study: Sound-induced fear can be treated
By Zhou Wenting in Shanghai (China Daily) Updated: 2016-09-06 08:04

Scientists in Shanghai say they've found a way to erase the brain's association of fear with certain sounds.

Their findings could open up new methods to cure post-traumatic stress and anxiety disorders. A particular pathway in the brain, and the suppression of its activity, can lead to reduction in fear responses.

Research results were published on the website of the journal Nature Neuroscience on Sept 5.

The researchers, from the Institute of Neuroscience, a branch of Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, tested their hypothesis on mice. They played a certain sound and delivered a simultaneous electric shock. The mice learned to associate the sound with the shock and exhibited fear responses whenever the sound was played, even when no shock was delivered.

"When we used methods such as optogenetics and chemogenetics to selectively reduce the neural activity on this pathway, the fear responses exhibited by the mice were greatly reduced. They will be active as usual when hearing the sound instead of freezing with fear," said Yang Yang, a researcher on the team.

The pathway is found between the amygdala, a tiny area in the brain that reacts to threats in one's environment, and the auditory sensory area called the auditory cortex, Yang said.

She said the research result is of great significance because a similar pathway is known to exist in the brains of primates.

If the corresponding pathway can be found in the human brain and similar interventions are implemented, people who suffer from anxiety disorder and PTSD brought by fearful memories will be relieved, Yang said.

Mu-Ming Poo, the lead researcher for the project and director of the institute, said the possible clinical applications of the research could conceivably serve as a substitute for the current underdeveloped drug therapies for brain diseases.

"Medicines in this area have poor specificity, as well as visible side effects such as damage to other brain functions. Scientists and doctors have been looking for such noninvasive means to help sufferers of mental disorders recover," Poo said.