News on China's scientific and technological development.

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China will set up two more comprehensive weather-monitoring stations on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, another step toward the goal of establishing 23 stations on the plateau, said Yao Tandong, director of the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Sometimes called "the third pole", the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau has gained growing attention because of its significant role in global atmospheric circulation and its sensitivity to climate change.

China has about 10 monitoring stations on the plateau so far, said Yao. However, it is still too few to cover the area of more than 2.4 million square kilometers.

Since 2003, the Chinese Academy of Sciences has set up monitoring stations in Namtso, the Himalayas and Ngari.

"We will build two new stations at Hoh Xil and Medog as early as this year. The project will let us have a better understanding of global climate and environmental changes from information gathered in the plateau," Yao said.

The plateau has the cleanest environment in the country, Yao said. However, glaciers in the area have been retreating more quickly in the past decade because of climate change. The region is home to thousands of glaciers, which exert a direct influence on social and economic development in the surrounding regions of China, India, Nepal, Tajikistan, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bhutan.

"Although the glacier loss will not affect the Qinghai-Tibet Railway, it may have an impact on hydropower generators in the region, which use water from the glaciers," Yao said.

According to the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the glacier loss has become greater in the past 10 years. Glacial retreat in the plateau has a significant effect on water availability in the arid regions in Northwest China. The institution's previous research shows that the glacial retreat in the 1990s caused an increase of 5.5 percent in river runoff in Northwest China.

"We need to build more multiple-function monitoring stations and an ecosystem monitoring platform to keep an eye on climate change and the environment, because it's a region that has unique interactions between the atmosphere, cryosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere. A single-function monitoring station isn't enough to do the job," Yao said.
 
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China has completed the construction of a powerful test bench for a train braking system, setting a world record by allowing a maximum test speed of up to 530 kilometers per hour, a railway researcher said Sunday.

Li Heping, a political adviser and researcher with the China Academy of Railway Sciences (CARS), said that as a key technology for high-speed trains, the test bench has been put into operation at a state key laboratory for the high-speed railway system at CARS.

The test bench can simulate the high-speed train braking process in different conditions like dry or humid environments, as well as airstream, low temperature and snowfall, Li told Xinhua on the sidelines of China's annual legislative session.

The CARS-developed high-speed train brake disc and brake lining have both passed tests at the new bench under maximum-speed conditions, said Li.
 
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Huawei recently announced their brand new Ascend D Quad XL with their own in-house custom built quad-core processor. No Qualcomm or NVIDIA Tegra 3 is present in this device. They’ve been touting it as the “worlds fastest” and some recently leaked benchmarks might be showing just that. Check out these impressive results below from Nenamark and a few other tests where the new Huawei quad-core tops the charts.

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We had a chance to get a quick hands-on with the new Huawei phone during Mobile World Congress and it sure seemed fast running on Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich but we weren’t able to do much testing like we have here. These benchmark tests show it competing against some of the best and fastest silicon around like the NVIDIA Tegra 3 quad-core, and Samsung’s 1.4 GHz dual-core, and it beats them all according to these tests.

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Above is a Nenamark result, a test we are more familiar with in the world of Android and here it has a decently large lead over the competition. Beating out the Tegra 3, and even Qualcomm’s new and still unreleased S4 1.5 GHz dual-core processor. Qualcomm has been saying it will perform better than quad-core chips and is more advanced with two Cortex-A15′s, but the Huawei here holds its own quite well.

We still haven’t seen what Samsung’s newest quad-core will be able to achieve, or their upgraded dual-core either, but I have a feeling it will be impressive. Apple’s new A5X in the new iPad is supposed to be equally impressive and 4x as powerful as the Tegra 3 in gaming, but that hasn’t been proven yet. It looks like things are really starting to heat up in the SoC game with Qualcomm, NVIDIA, TI, Samsung Exynos, and now this Huawei processor. I can’t wait to see more and look forward to seeing these upcoming phones from Huawei as they start to finally make a push for the high end market.
 
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China is poised to overtake the U.S. as the leading market for smartphone shipments in 2012, according to new data from IDC.

The research firm on Thursday predicted China will have a 20.7 percent share of the global smartphone market this year, narrowly overtaking the U.S. share of 20.6 percent. The Asian nation edged out the U.S. in smartphone shipments for two consecutive months in the second half of 2011, and is expected to continue that momentum this year and beyond, IDC said.

"[Chinese] smartphone shipments are expected to take a slim lead over the U.S. in 2012 before the gap widens in the coming years," said Wong Teck Zhung, senior market analyst with IDC's Asia/Pacific client devices team, in a statement. "There will be no turning back this leadership changeover."

By 2016, China is expected to have 20.2 percent of the global smartphone market, while the U.S. will have 15.3 percent, IDC said.

Meanwhile, smartphone shipments to emerging markets — such as India and Brazil — will "drive growth in the worldwide smartphone market" in the coming years, IDC said. More mature markets like Japan, the U.S. and U.K. will continue to see growth in smartphone adoption, though not at the same rate as emerging markets.

"Due to their sheer size, strong demand, and healthy replacement rates, emerging markets are quickly becoming the engines of the worldwide smartphone market," said Ramon Llamas, senior research analyst with IDC's mobile phone technology and trends team, in a statement. "Users in emerging markets seek more than simple voice telephony, and smartphones offer the ideal platform for mobile entertainment, social networking, and business usage as seen in developed markets."

IDC predicts that by 2016, India and Brazil will enter the top five country markets for smartphone shipments. India is expected to move from the seventh-largest smartphone market this year to number three by 2016. Brazil is expected to take the number four spot in 2016, up from number ten this year.

Cost will likely remain a challenge to smartphone growth in these emerging markets, however.

"The total cost of ownership remains a hurdle for potential smartphone buyers," Llamas said. "Smartphones still represent a significant investment for consumers in many countries."

Smartphone vendors should develop lower-cost smartphone alternatives and mobile operators need to "creatively subsidize device cost and data plans," Llamas continued. Android smartphones priced less than $200 were popular in 2011, and are expected be a major factor driving smartphone growth going forward.
 
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China's polysilicon industry is suffering from reduced orders from overseas, overproduction and tumbling prices. The government and industry organizations are trying to help companies cope with the challenges, with almost all leading suppliers in southwestern Sichuan province, one of the main polysilicon manufacturing bases in China, halting operations.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology held a meeting with senior industry executives March 13, according to the First Financial Daily.

A team established to help technological innovation is set to hold a coordination meeting March 18 to discuss how to counter the downward business trend.

Polysilicon is a material consisting of small silicon crystals. It is called the cornerstone of microelectronics because it is a key material in semiconductors, flat display panels, solar cells and other high-tech devices.

Sichuan is home to six of the 20 polysilicon manufacturers sanctioned by the ministry. Only two of the companies — Sichuan Yongxiang and ReneSola — are still operating.

More plant closures are taking place at manufacturing bases in other regions. Analysts say the fast expansion of the polysilicon industry in China has outstripped market growth. The debt crisis in Europe has cut orders. Prices have also been cut in half since early 2011. Domestic demand is also low.

Most companies that have halted operations say they are using the slowdown to step up R&D and streamline manufacturing operations to save production costs.
 
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News spread quickly Wednesday evening on Weibo, a Twitter-style microblogging service in China, that the State Council is including PM2.5 into the national air quality standards and that authorities are to start monitoring it soon.

The State Council, China's cabinet on Wednesday passed revised air quality standards which include an index for PM2.5, or fine particulate matter 2.5 microns or less in diameter. Such matter is considered more harmful to health than the larger PM10 that has been measured in the past, as smaller matter can penetrate deeply into the lungs.

A campaign on the country's social network websites towards more accurate and transparent monitoring of pollution levels in China's cities since last autumn seemed to have gained a satisfying response from policymakers.

As one of the first to raise the topic publicly, real estate tycoon Pan Shiyi expressed his surprise on his microblog. "The order from the State Council? Was I dazzled?"

"Good news, applause," posted economist Xu Xiaonian on his microblog.

The new standards include indices for the concentration of PM2.5 and ozone over a period of eight hours, according to a statement from the State Council issued after a meeting presided over by Premier Wen Jiabao.

The country's highest state administrative body said the government planned to monitor PM2.5 in four municipalities, 27 provincial capitals, as well as three key regions — east China's Yangtze River Delta, south China's Pearl River Delta, and the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei area in the north, for this year.

In 2013, the monitoring will be extended to 113 model cities on the state environmental protection list, and to all cities at prefecture level or above in 2015.

As recently as a few months ago, PM2.5 was still a term for environment scientists and few expected such a concrete action would be made in such a short time.

For years China's environment authorities have monitored PM10, which gauges particular matter under 10 micrometers, as their key index for air quality. Yet the government reading, sometimes contrary to public feeling about how high pollution levels were, became a major item of concern after environmental activists, media figures and opinion leaders raised the topic on social networking sites.

On Sina Weibo alone, more than 1 million microblogs have been posted concerning the issue. Many members of the public volunteered to document the air quality of their cities with pictures and environmental groups even started monitoring local PM2.5 levels using their own devices.

The public have become informed about the issue from experts and activists debating the issue online. Now many taxi drivers can say something about particulate matter.

In response to the internet lobbying, the Ministry of Environmental Protection published a draft of the revised air quality standards in November and adopted it in December.

In January, Beijing's environment authority launched the much-anticipated PM2.5 measure of air quality.

"Leaders' wisdom counts. And credit also goes to billions of netizens," Pan commented on his microblog.
 
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