China Science & Technology Forum

[JSCh]

EAST achieves longest steady-state H-mode operations
November 16, 2016

Time traces of key plasma parameters for steady state H-mode operation over 60 seconds in EAST. Credit: EAST team​

Celebrating the 10th anniversary of physics operations, the 11th EAST (Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak) campaign reached a milestone in the exploration of advanced operation scenarios—achieving over 60s fully non-inductive/steady-state long-pulse H-mode plasmas under radio-frequency heating and ITER-like tungsten divertor operations, which marks the first minute-scale steady-state H-mode operation obtained on past and existing tokamaks around the world.

This is a major advance beyond the achievement of a record 32s long-pulse H-mode discharge in 2012. Since then, the EAST team has made great efforts to develop the steady-state H-mode scenario on EAST.


-> http://phys.org/news/2016-11-east-longest-steady-state-h-mode.html

 

[JSCh]

IMECAS and SMIC Cooperate on MEMS R&D and Foundry Platform
Nov 16, 2016

Institute of Microelectronics of Chinese Academy of Sciences (IMECAS) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation ("SMIC"; NYSE: SMI; SEHK: 981) signed a cooperation agreement on Nov. 15 in Shanghai for a MEMS (Micro-Electro-Mechanical System) R&D foundry platform to jointly develop MEMS sensor standard processes and build a complete MEMS supply chain.

According to the agreement, IMECAS and SMIC will work together to create a platform based standard as well as mass production technologies, which will shorten the development cycle from design to production and thus help the MEMS industry grow more effectively and efficiently. IMECAS has rich experiences in MEMS Sensor design, packaging technology design. And SMIC has leading standardized process technology platforms, industry and market influence. Both will provide a strong foundation for future cooperation.

Joint development will start from a MEMS environmental sensor, combining the features of other types of MEMS Sensors.

"Through the cooperation between SMIC and IMECAS, we can exploit our advantages and jointly build an open MEMS technology service platform and an electronic information integration platform for the MEMS supply chain. With the integration of design, manufacturing, packing, testing, public platform and venture investment, we can form a supply chain ecosystem and support the development of a global as well as domestic Chinese MEMS industry," said YE Tianchun, director of IMECAS.

"SMIC’s R&D team has made a lot of achievements in developing new sensor technology platforms and introducing new customers. SMIC is willing to open our platforms to support commercialized production and the R&D of universities and research institutions." said Dr. Tzu-Yin Chiu, Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director of SMIC.

"SMIC and IMECAS have cooperated in numerous logic process development projects. This time we will expand our collaboration and promote the R&D of complete standardized MEMS sensor technologies to help integrate and improve the MEMS supply chain," Chiu said.



IMECAS and SMIC Cooperate on MEMS R&D and Foundry Platform---Chinese Academy of Sciences

 

[JSCh]

Look! Dolphin Robot Takes Their First Leap in Qinhai Trangu Reservoir
Nov 16, 2016

As the Olympic Motto “faster, higher, stronger” goes, dolphins are generally recognized as gifted swimmers in nature with outstanding water sports capabilities, e.g. leaping up to several meters and then making a turn in the air swiftly. Inspired by dolphins in natural world, Professor YU Junzhi and his colleagues from Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CASIA), have developed an elegant robotic dolphin to mimic dolphin leaps.

Researchers of CASIA & thier dolphin robot. (Image by CASIA)​

This robotic dolphin, modeled after a spotted dolphin, is designed with particular emphasis on streamlining as well as a high thrust tail powered by electric motors. The main load-bearing parts of the skeleton are made of titanium and other parts are made of aluminum, copper, and nylon. As for electronics, the dolphin robot is equipped with a microcontroller with high computational performance, a variety of onboard sensors, and a wireless communication module.

Building the hardware was only part of the challenge. The other half was modeling and calculating the speeds and angles needed for recreating the dolphin's leap. To solve this problem, the research team proposed a novel angle of attack theory based on control method to maximize the pushing speed. Meanwhile, a synthesized attitude control scheme was formed through the hybrid propulsion capability of the posterior body and the complementary maneuverability of the flippers.

Dolphin robot swims in Qinhai Trangu Reservoir. (Image by CASIA)​

Finally, dolphin robot was successful in swimming test in Qinhai Trangu Reservoir at the speed of 2.1 m/s, making it one of the fastest swimmers for its size ever built. Besides, the dolphins also realized several kinds of dolphin leaps, like one-shot leap and serial leaps.

Under the control of host system, the dolphin-like robots can be used to simulate agile movement, such as swimming straightly, yawing, floating and diving etc., which are hard to observe or measure. In addition, the acquired data of water quality parameters during their cruise, e.g. PH value, temperature, electric conductivity can be uploaded to the host system in real time.

According to Prof. YU, in next stage the research will focus on investigating the energy expenditure to examine the power-speed relationship of dolphin propulsion on the robotic platform. Besides, another ongoing endeavor is made to increase jumping distance and height by means of improving mechanical design and control approaches.

The research entitled Development of a Fast-Swimming Dolphin Robot Capable of Leaping has been published in IEEE/ASME Transaction on Mechatronics.


Contact:
Prof. YU Junzhi
Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 95 Zhongguancun East Road, 100190, BEIJING, CHINA
Tel: 86-010-82544796
E-mail: junzhi.yu@ia.ac.cn



Look! Dolphin Robot Takes Their First Leap in Qinhai Trangu Reservoir----Institute of Automation

 

[JSCh]

Chinese Research Team that Employs High Performance Computing to Understand Weather Patterns Wins 2016 ACM Gordon Bell Prize

Salt Lake City, Utah, November 17, 2016 – ACM, the world's leading professional computing society, has named a 12-member Chinese team the recipients of the 2016 ACM Gordon Bell Prize for their research project, “10M-Core Scalable Fully-Implicit Solver for Nonhydrostatic Atmospheric Dynamics.” The winning team presented a solver (method for calculating) atmospheric dynamics. The ACM Gordon Bell Prize tracks the progress of parallel computing and rewards innovation in applying high performance computing to challenges in science, engineering, and large- scale data analytics. The award was bestowed during the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis (SC16) in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Since the dawn of computing, scientists have used data analytics in an effort to predict and simulate the weather and related atmospheric events. In the early years of weather forecasting, scientists might have used standard central processing units (CPUs). With each passing year, the continued expansion in the capabilities of high performance computers has enabled researchers to employ increasingly sophisticated computational methods for the analysis and modeling of weather patterns. Advanced scientific computers break problems down into composite parts and perform immense amounts of mathematical calculations simultaneously. The performance of a supercomputer is measured in floating-point operations per second (FLOPS). Some of the latest supercomputers are capable of performing quadrillions of FLOPS.

In the abstract of their presentation, the winning team writes, “On the road to the seamless weather-climate prediction, a major obstacle is the difficulty of dealing with various spatial and temporal scales. The atmosphere contains time-dependent multi-scale dynamics that support a variety of wave motions.”

To simulate the vast number of variables inherent in a weather system developing in the atmosphere, the winning group presents a highly scalable fully implicit solver for three-dimensional nonhydrostatic atmospheric simulations governed by fully compressible Euler equations. Euler equations are a set of equations frequently used to understand fluid dynamics (liquids and gasses in motion).

Elaborating further, they add, “In the solver, we propose a highly efficient domain-decomposed multigrid preconditioner that can greatly accelerate the convergence rate at the extreme scale. For solving the overlapped subdomain problems, a geometry-based pipelined incomplete LU factorization method is designed to further exploit the on-chip fine-grained concurrency.”

The fully-implicit solver successfully scales to the entire system of the Sunway TaihuLight, a Chinese supercomputer with over 10.5 M heterogeneous cores, allowing for a performance of 7.95 PFLOPS in double precision. The Chinese team contends that this is the largest fully-implicit simulation to date. The Sunway TaihuLight is ranked as the fastest supercomputer in the world. It is nearly three times as fast as the Tianhe-2, the supercomputer that previously held the world record for speed.

Winning team members include Chao Yang, Chinese Academy of Sciences; Wei Xue, Tsinghua University; Haohuan Fu, Tsinghua University; Hongtao You, National Research Center of Parallel Computer Engineering and Technology; Xinliang Wang, Beijing Normal University; Yulong Ao, Chinese Academy of Sciences; Fangfang Liu, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lin Gan, Tsinghua University; Ping Xu, Tsinghua University; Lanning Wang, Beijing Normal University; Guangwen Yang, Tsinghua University; and Weimin Zheng, Tsinghua University.

Innovations from advanced scientific computing have a far-reaching impact in many areas of science and society—from understanding the evolution of the universe and other challenges in astronomy, to complex geological phenomena, to nuclear energy research, to economic forecasting, to developing new pharmaceuticals. The annual SC conference brings together scientists, engineers and researchers from around the world for an outstanding week of technical papers, timely research posters, and tutorials.


https://www.acm.org/media-center/2016/november/gordon-bell-prize-2016

 

[JSCh]

Chip firm seeks to tap wider market
2016-11-17 10:26, China Daily

An engineer shows off a Sunway TaihuLight chip. The newly developed supercomputer powered by SW26010 processors is more than twice as powerful as the previous No 1 on June 20, 2016.(Photo/Xinhua)

The Chinese chip designer behind the world's fastest supercomputer is eyeing wider commercial application for its chips, as the artificial-intelligence boom is spurring demand for processors that can deliver supercomputing power.

The National High Performance IC Design Center (Shanghai), which designed the semiconductors to power the Sunway TaihuLight supercomputer, is in discussions with domestic companies about the use of its chips in artificial-intelligence-enabled products.

Yao Li, technical director at the IC design center, said: "We are in discussions with both internet heavyweights and State-owned enterprises about possible cooperation."

The Sunway TaihuLight supercomputer at the Chinese Supercomputing Center in Wuxi, Jiangsu province, is the world's fastest supercomputer as of June, according to TOP500, an organization that ranks the 500 most-powerful computer systems twice a year.

The machine, which is more than twice as powerful as the previous winner, is powered by SW26010 processors, designed by the Shanghai IC design center.

Previous winners often came with chips made by U.S. companies, such as Intel Corp.

"But we developed a new architecture that enables our chips to deliver more capacity with low power consumption," said Yao.

According to him, the IC design center is now working on a new generation of processors to power China's next supercomputer, which is expected to run 10 times faster than the current fastest.

The center is part of China's efforts to reduce its reliance on foreign technology. In 2014, China spent more than $200 billion on importing chipsets -- more than it spent on oil imports in the same period.

Security concerns are also prompting State-owned enterprises and local governments to embrace homegrown IT products.

Separately, in addition to developing a new generation of supercomputer chips every three to five years, the Shanghai center also makes tailor-made chips for the military and the government.

"We are stepping up efforts to build an ecosystem where more software can run on hardware powered by our chips," says Yao.

Office software products, such as WPS and some data software, are now compatible with devices powered by its chips.

Roger Sheng, research director at Gartner Inc, said the computing power of the SW26010 processors is well recognized. "The business opportunity is there, but efforts are needed to promote its commercial applications."

 

[TaiShang]

Chinese supercomputer project wins top int'l prize
(Xinhua) 20:43, November 18, 2016

NANJING, Nov. 18 -- A Chinese team on Friday won the 2016 ACM Gordon Bell prize, a top honor in high-performance computing, for an application running on China's fastest supercomputer.

It is the first time a Chinese team has won the award.

The project, named "10M-Core Scalable Fully-Implicit Solver for Nonhydrostatic Atmospheric Dynamics," presents a method for calculating atmospheric dynamics, according to the Association for Computing Machinery, which presented the award at the International Supercomputing Conference in Salt Lake City in the United States.

"The application can help improve global climate simulation and weather prediction," said Yang Guangwen, director of the National Supercomputing Center in Wuxi.

The center, also one of the application developers, is home to Sunway Taihulight, the supercomputer that runs the application.

The award shows that Taihulight not only excels in terms of speed, but can also be a powerful platform for a wide range of applications, said Yang.

Since its launch on June 20, Sunway Taihulight has helped research teams in both China and abroad make over 100 achievements in 19 different fields, including meteorology, oceanography, aerospace and biology, Yang said.

According to the International Supercomputing Conference, China has 171 of the world's top 500 supercomputers, tied for first place with the United States.

Established in 1987, the Gordon Bell Prize is awarded each year at the annual supercomputing conference. It recognizes outstanding achievements in high-performance computing applications.

 

[JSCh]

Q&A: One of the Brains behind the China Brain Project [Video]
A leader of the recently announced effort describes its goal of helping the world’s aging population find desperately needed treatments for psychiatric and neurodegenerative diseases

• By Gary Stix on November 15, 2016

Renowned neuroscientist Mu-Ming Poo is playing a key role in China’s contribution to the push by national and regional governments to set up gargantuan neuroscience research endeavors. The China Brain Project has yet to put forward funding specifics. But Poo, who directs the Institute of Neuroscience of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and has held multiple academic posts at U.S. universities, is helping to shape the project’s 15-year timeline.

To circumvent the paucity of drugs for neurological illnesses, Poo’s own team wants to focus on finding solid evidence for video games and other behavioral training methods that might produce near-term cognitive benefits for China’s aging population. Poo talked to Scientific American recently about these plans.



--> Q&A: One of the Brains behind the China Brain Project [Video] - Scientific American

 

[onebyone]

Material and plant samples retrieved from space experiments
Source: Xinhua 2016-11-19 16:23:08



BEIJING, Nov. 19 (Xinhua) -- Samples from space material and plant growth experiments carried out on China's space lab Tiangong-2 are in good condition and have been delivered to scientists for further research, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) said Saturday.

The material and plant samples were retrieved after the successful landing of the Shenzhou-11 spacecraft's reentry module Friday.

According to CAS, 12 out of 18 material samples sent to space via Tiangong-2 in September, including semiconductor, nano and thin film materials, were taken back for study, while the other six will remain in space to test their physical and chemical features in zero gravity for future development of material processing techniques.

Seeds of thale cress, a kind of flowering plant, have grown into pods after 48 days of cultivation in space, said CAS, adding that scientists will continue to grow the pods in the laboratory.


http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2016-11/19/c_135842572.htm

 

[艹艹艹]

http://en.people.cn/n3/2016/1120/c90000-9144251.html
EU to set up research and innovation center in Beijing
(China Daily) 09:54, November 20, 2016

　　(L-R) Tianjin Vice-Mayor Duan Chunhua, National Development and ReformCommission Vice-Minister Lin Nianxiu, Airbus President and CEO Fabrice Bregier andAviation Industry Corporation of China president Lin Zuoming lead a ground-breakingceremony for an A330 Completion and Delivery Center at Airbus Tianjin facilities inTianjin municipality, March 2, 2016. [Photo/IC]

The European Commission will invest 3 million euros ($3.18 million) to set up a researchand innovation center in China as part of its efforts to deepen EU-China scientific andtechnological cooperation.

The European Research and Innovation Center of Excellence is the first EC-funded centerin China that focuses on research and development. It will be headquartered in Beijing, and have networks in other cities on the mainland.

Its services will range from organizing events to increasing exchanges between Chineseand European researchers, to producing reports about the situation in China on scientificand technological innovation.

It will also help private companies from European Union countries do research and seekdevelopment in China and find Chinese partners.

The project will start working from January 2017 and is expected to come into fulloperation as early as 2019.

"The aim is to establish a center here in China that can help European researchers on thefirst step toward the Chinese market, help them contact with Chinese companies and, atthe same time, enable Chinese researchers to interact better with the European side," saidSara Medina, member of the board of SPI, a Portugal-based consulting firm which focuseson promoting EU-China scientific and technological cooperation.

 

[cirr]

China successfully 3D printed its 1st pressure vessel cylinder prototype for a nuclear reactor

Nov 18, 2016 | By Tess

With fast growing technologies like 3D printing, it seems that there is an exciting “first” almost every week. Today’s first comes from China, where the China Nuclear Power Research Institute and Nanfang Additive Manufacturing Technology Co. Ltd. (Nanfang-AM) have announced their first ever 3D printed pressure vessel cylinder prototype.

The prototype, an ACP100 pressure vessel cylinder, was 3D printed using a heavy metal additive manufacturing system developed by the China Nuclear Power Research Institute and Nanfang-AM. The 3D printed cylinder prototype marks an important step for the companies towards realizing a small pressure reactor made entirely from 3D printed parts.

The pressure vessel cylinder itself was 3D printed out of an undisclosed metal material and the prototype weighs an impressive 400 kg. According to the Chinese companies that developed the prototype, its chemical composition, as well as its material and mechanical properties meet the relevant international nuclear power regulatory requirements.

On a larger scale, the 3D printed ACP100 pressure vessel cylinder prototype has positive implications within the nuclear field on a whole, as it demonstrates the applicability and potentials of using 3D printing technology within it. Like in other industries and fields, the integration of additive manufacturing into the nuclear sector could lead to significantly shorter equipment manufacturing cycles, could reduce manufacturing and overall equipment costs, and could even improve equipment quality, efficiency, and safety due to the ability to 3D model more complex parts.

Importantly, the ability to 3D print such parts as a pressure vessel cylinder prototype has pushed forward the “Made in China 2025” initiative, which seeks to transform and upgrade Chinese industries, especially the manufacturing industries. Among the goals of the initiative are to expand innovation-driven manufacturing, emphasize quality over quantity, aspire to greener development, and more.

http://www.3ders.org/articles/20161...cylinder-prototype-for-a-nuclear-reactor.html

 

[JSCh]

Synopsis: Ten Photons in a Tangle
November 15, 2016
An entangled polarization state of ten photons sets a new record for multiphoton entanglement.

X.-L. Wang et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. (2016)​

Quantum computing requires multiple qubits entangled together. So far, only a handful of qubits have been coupled together successfully. A new experiment raises the bar with the entangling of ten photons, two more than the previous photon record. While still a ways off from what’s needed to make quantum computers competitive with classical ones, the entanglement of this many photons might be sufficient for certain quantum error correction codes and teleportation experiments.

Entangling photons typically relies on a nonlinear crystal, which converts a small fraction of incoming photons into a pair of entangled photons. In the case of the -barium borate (BBO) crystal, the two photons have opposite polarizations—one being horizontal, the other vertical—and they are emitted in different directions. Researchers therefore use a variety of optical devices to collect the photon pair, which can then be entangled with pairs from other BBO crystals.

Previous multiphoton entanglement experiments had relatively low collection efficiencies of around 40%. Xi-Lin Wang from the University of Science and Technology of China and colleagues have developed a system with 70% collection efficiency. Rather than using a single BBO crystal to create pairs, they utilize two closely spaced BBO crystals separated by a polarization-rotating plate. This “sandwich” configuration generates entangled pairs of photons traveling in the same direction with the same polarization. The boost in efficiency from this output alignment means Wang and colleagues can achieve a high count rate with relatively low input power. To create ten-photon entanglement, the team placed five sandwich structures in a row and illuminated them all with a 0.57-W laser. They then used polarizing beam splitters to combine the photon pairs from each BBO crystal together.

This research is published in Physical Review Letters.

–Michael Schirber

Paper: Xi-Lin Wang, Luo-Kan Chen, W. Li, H.-L. Huang, C. Liu, C. Chen, Y.-H. Luo, Z.-E. Su, D. Wu, Z.-D. Li, H. Lu, Y. Hu, X. Jiang, C.-Z. Peng, L. Li, N.-L. Liu, Yu-Ao Chen, Chao-Yang Lu, and Jian-Wei Pan. "Experimental Ten-Photon Entanglement", Phys. Rev. Lett. (2016), DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.117.210502


Physics - Synopsis: Ten Photons in a Tangle

18/11/2016
Ten linked photons break entanglement record

Particles that have linked quantum states, known as ‘entangled’ particles, can affect each other’s states even if they are physically separated. Now scientists have set a record by entangling ten photons — two more than in previous work.

Entangled particles should one day enable quantum computing and communications, but they are inefficient to produce. A team led by Jian-Wei Pan of the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei created the ten entangled photons by running five photon pairs through a series of four polarizing beam splitters. They also developed a laser light source that produced their photon batches about 100 times faster than did previous experiments.

Original Research
Phys. Rev. Lett. (2016) ​

http://www.nature.com/articles/n-11061996?WT.mc_id=TWT_NA_1611_RESEARCHIGHLIGHTS_PORTFOLIO

 

[JSCh]

Graphene Solar Absorber Could Enable Cheap Thermal Desalination
By Dexter Johnson
Posted 21 Nov 2016 | 20:00 GMT

To those uninitiated to the costs of thermal desalination of water, the idea of simply vaporizing water to take out the impurities seems like it would offer a limitless supply of fresh water just by using it on the world’s oceans. However, the energy costs for thermal desalination has been estimated at around 80 megawatt-hours per megaliter of water produced, rendering it too costly for just about everyone except Gulf States rich in oil and desperate for fresh water.

One way around these high-energy costs has been thought to be solar-powered thermal desalination, which can help produce clean water in remote areas and developing countries. However, the solar approach to water desalination is rather limited in the amount of fresh water it can produce and is further hampered by the need for optical concentrators and for thermal insulation, both of which have limited the large-scale use of this approach.



--> Graphene Solar Absorber Could Enable Cheap Thermal Desalination - IEEE Spectrum

Xiuqiang Lia, Weichao Xua, Mingyao Tanga, Lin Zhoua, Bin Zhua, Shining Zhua and Jia Zhua. "Graphene oxide-based efficient and scalable solar desalination under one sun with a confined 2D water path", PNAS (2016), DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1613031113.

Significance
Direct solar desalination, which produces desalinated water directly using solar energy with minimum carbon footprint, is considered a promising technology to address the global water scarcity. Here, we report a solar desalination device, with efficient two-dimensional water supply and suppressed thermal loss, which can enable an efficient (80% under one-sun illumination) and effective (four orders salinity decrement) solar desalination. The energy transfer efficiency of this foldable graphene oxide film-based device fabricated by a scalable process is independent of water quantity and can be achieved without optical or thermal supporting systems, therefore significantly improving the scalability and feasibility of this technology toward a complementary portable and personalized water solution.

Abstract
Because it is able to produce desalinated water directly using solar energy with minimum carbon footprint, solar steam generation and desalination is considered one of the most important technologies to address the increasingly pressing global water scarcity. Despite tremendous progress in the past few years, efficient solar steam generation and desalination can only be achieved for rather limited water quantity with the assistance of concentrators and thermal insulation, not feasible for large-scale applications. The fundamental paradox is that the conventional design of direct absorber−bulk water contact ensures efficient energy transfer and water supply but also has intrinsic thermal loss through bulk water. Here, enabled by a confined 2D water path, we report an efficient (80% under one-sun illumination) and effective (four orders salinity decrement) solar desalination device. More strikingly, because of minimized heat loss, high efficiency of solar desalination is independent of the water quantity and can be maintained without thermal insulation of the container. A foldable graphene oxide film, fabricated by a scalable process, serves as efficient solar absorbers (>94%), vapor channels, and thermal insulators. With unique structure designs fabricated by scalable processes and high and stable efficiency achieved under normal solar illumination independent of water quantity without any supporting systems, our device represents a concrete step for solar desalination to emerge as a complementary portable and personalized clean water solution.​

 

[cirr]

Chinese Manufacturers Start Making OLED TVs

By Adnan Farooqui on 11/21/2016 08:52 PST

The OLED TV market has more or less been cornered by Korean giants like LG and Samsung. Their display affiliates are the ones that are supplying OLED panels to other manufacturers so they basically have a virtual monopoly on the market. Chinese manufacturers have been trying to compete as well and they are now ready to push their homegrown OLED technology into the market.

BOE, one of the biggest display panel manufacturers in China, has teamed up with manufacturer Skyworth to introduce an indigenously produced OLED TV. The companies plan to launch this TV in both Chinese and European markets. They’re planning to carve a space for themselves in the OLED market that doesn’t have much competition right now.

Skyworth recently launched its OLED TV at the 18th HighTech Fair in Shenzhen. This is the first time that an OLED TV with a Chinese panel has been launched. Skyworth has been making OLED TVs since 2013 but it had been sourcing panels from LG Display for those televisions.

OLED TV panel suppliers from South Korea are likely to retain their lead for a couple of years as Chinese manufacturers will certainly require time to bring up the yield and cut down costs enough to compete with their Korean rivals.

The company is now planning to release the indigenously produced OLED TV in China and across Europe from next year. It’s unclear at this point in time if the U.S. market is on its radar as well, it may very well be, as Chinese companies are increasingly focusing on efforts to break into the lucrative U.S. market.

http://www.ubergizmo.com/2016/11/chinese-manufacturers-start-making-oled-tvs/

 

[cirr]

中国首台2万瓦光纤激光器正式装机

22.11.2016

新华社武汉11月22日电（记者胡喆、黄艳）22日，在“武汉·中国光谷”激光技术与产业发展创新论坛上，中国航天科工集团公司有关负责人表示，我国首台全自主研发的2万瓦光纤激光器正式进入装机阶段，这一技术成果直接打破国外技术垄断，预计可使进口产品降价40%左右。

“目前，我国2万瓦光纤激光器只能依赖进口。”项目负责人之一、国家“千人计划”专家闫大鹏介绍，一台进口的2万瓦光纤激光器市场价格为600多万元，实现国产后，售价可降低40%。此前，中国航天科工集团四院已成功研发出1万瓦光纤激光器，成为继美国之后全球第二家掌握此核心技术的企业。

光纤激光器是继二氧化碳和半导体激光器之后的第三代产品，它由细如发丝的光纤来释放激光能量，可广泛应用于工业造船、飞机和汽车制造、航空航天以及3D打印等领域，与传统二氧化碳激光器相比，光纤激光器的耗电量仅为其1/5，体积只有其1/10，但速度快4倍，转换效率高20%，且没有污染。

我国高功率光纤激光器曾长期依赖进口，价格昂贵，供货周期长。经过多年努力，中国航天科工集团四院先后自主研发出国内首台脉冲全光纤激光器和首台连续全光纤激光器。

闫大鹏介绍，此前我国首台万瓦连续光纤激光器研制成功，打破国外垄断并使同类进口产品价格下降50%。如今2万瓦光纤激光器正式在武汉装机，明年即可整机试运行。

据悉，目前中国航天科工集团四院的相关技术和产能已跃居全国第一、全球第三。产品涵盖10W－100W脉冲光纤激光器、50W－10000W连续光纤激光器两大系列，占国内40%以上的市场份额，产品出口美洲、欧洲，韩国、日本等20多个国家和地区。

光纤激光器（资料图）

据长江网报道，这台2万千瓦光纤激光器由中国航天科工四院所属武汉锐科光纤激光器技术有限责任公司研发，或将于2018年上半年问世并投入使用。

2万瓦光纤激光器是湖北省182个重大技术创新专项项目之一正式启动。包括获得的重大技术创新专项资金100万元在内，锐科公司共投入788.9万元用于这一项目的研发。

激光设备的核心部件是激光器，相当于汽车的发动机。据了解，光纤激光器是继二氧化碳和半导体激光器之后的第三代产品，它由细如发丝的光纤来释放激光能量，可广泛应用于工业造船、飞机和汽车制造、航空航天以及3D打印等领域，与传统二氧化碳激光器相比，光纤激光器的耗电量仅为其1/5，体积只有其1/10，但速度快4倍，转换效率高20%，且没有污染。

2013年，武汉锐科公司已成功研发出我国首台1万瓦光纤激光器，成为继美国之后全球第二家掌握此核心技术的企业。这一技术是中国工业发展的重要里程碑，标志着中国光纤激光器自主研发能力已达到世界一流水平。如今2万瓦光纤激光器正式在武汉装机，明年即可整机试运行。

“目前，美国还是对中国禁运一千瓦以上的大功率光纤激光器。”作为项目负责人之一，国家“千人计划”专家、锐科公司总工程师闫大鹏介绍，万瓦连续光纤激光器研制成功，打破国外垄断后，迫使进口产品价格由每台500万元降至300多万元。2万瓦光纤激光器实现国产后，将使进口产品售价从600多万元的水平上降低40%。

2007年以前，我国高功率光纤激光器长期依赖美国进口，价格昂贵，供货周期长。锐科公司经过几年努力，先后自主研发出国内首台10瓦脉冲全光纤激光器、首台25瓦脉冲全光纤激光器、首台100瓦连续全光纤激光器和首台1000瓦连续全光纤激光器，打破国外垄断并迫使同类进口产品价格下降50%。

目前，锐科公司的相关技术和产能已跃居全国第一、全球第三。产品涵盖10-100瓦脉冲光纤激光器、50瓦-10000瓦连续光纤激光器两大系列，占国内40%以上的市场份额，产品出口美洲、欧洲，韩国、日本等20多个国家和地区。
观察者网综合新华社、长江网、湖北日报报道

http://www.guancha.cn/Science/2016_11_22_381476.shtml

@Bussard Ramjet

 

[JSCh]

22 November 2016
Innovative Technique to Curtail Illegal Copying of Digital Media
A new method creates invisible optical watermarks to protect images, videos and books from counterfeit distribution

WASHINGTON — In today’s digital world it can be challenging to prevent photos, videos and books from being illegally copied and distributed. A new light-based technique is making it more practical to create secure, invisible watermarks that can be used to detect and prosecute counterfeiting.

“In our research, we use a complex pattern of light, or diffraction pattern, as a unique watermark,” said Yishi Shi, from the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, China. “The invisible watermark is embedded into the content we are trying to protect. Imperceptibility is one of the most significant advantages of optical watermarking.”

In The Optical Society's journal Optics Express, Shi and colleagues report a new approach that encodes the optical watermark in a single step. The new technique is faster and uses a less complex optical setup than other optical watermarking approaches previously pursued. The new technique can also be used to optically encrypt data or to hide information within images.

Practical watermarking
The new method is based on a technique called single-shot ptychography encoding (SPE) that uses multiple partially-overlapping beams of light to generate a diffraction pattern from a complex object. Unlike other methods, SPE can encode the optical watermark in a single exposure with no mechanical scanning. SPE is also less prone to error than other methods and uses a simpler optical setup.

In addition to conducting numerical simulations to test their method, the researchers carried out an optical experiment showing the usefulness of SPE. “Most methods for optical watermarking have only been demonstrated with simulations,” said Shi. “Our experiment shows that our method is suitable for practical optical watermarking.”

For the optical experiment, the researchers used SPE to create a complex watermark consisting of a diffraction pattern of multiple tiny spots. Prior to embedding the watermark into a host image, they used computer processing to remove any repeated data and to scramble the diffraction pattern, making it easier to embed the watermark and further improving its security. The spot size can be reduced to smaller than 10 microns, which helps prevent degradation of the host image.

Once a watermark is embedded into digital media, there are multiple ways to detect it to check for authenticity. If someone knows an optical watermark is present, it can be detected by subtracting the host image from the watermarked image and then using a special security key and extraction algorithm. For cases where the presence of a watermark is unknown, the watermark could be extracted using existing algorithm-based detection methods.

Upping the complexity
The researchers are now working to apply SPE to dynamic watermarking, which creates watermarks from objects that change quickly. For example, the variations that occur within a biological cell could be recorded and used to create a special watermark. They also plan to use SPE for multi-image watermarking and even 3D watermarking, while also working to further enhance the imaging quality of single-shot ptychography.

“The successful implementation of SPE will be a big breakthrough for optical security and could bring SPE-based optical watermarking and encryption closer to commercial application,” said Shi.

Paper: WenHui Xu, HongFeng Xu, Yong Luo, Tuo Li, and Yishi Shi, "Optical watermarking based on single-shot-ptychography encoding," Opt. Express 24, 27922-27936 (2016).


Innovative Technique to Curtail Illegal Copying of Digital Media | News Releases | The Optical Society