News on China's scientific and technological development.

China Plans to Feed 80 Million People With ‘Seawater Rice’​

Chinese scientists have developed salt-tolerant strains of rice in a bid to ensure food security as sea levels rise from climate change.

• Initial testing suggests the technology may help a satellite survive and function after being hit, according to the team
• It has been designed to defend against a disabling energy surge from a high-power microwave weapon

in Beijing

Published: 5:00am, 23 Feb, 2022

Updated: 5:23am, 23 Feb, 2022



High-power microwave weapons could be used to disable a target in orbit, such as a satellite. Photo: Shutterstock

Chinese scientists say they have developed a new technology that could protect satellites from attack by high-power microwave weapons.

The team, from the China Academy of Space Technology, said it had completed ground testing of the technology, and aspects of it were already being used by some critical space assets.

High-power microwave weapons can disable electronic equipment. Using an antenna to transmit an intense energy beam at a target in orbit, such as a satellite, they can generate an electrical surge strong enough to take it out of action, according to Li Wendong, a research engineer at CAST.

That electrical current would travel into a satellite’s wiring, he said.

“The electromagnetic pulses that enter the satellite will be concentrated in extremely small, weak areas with high energy density,” Li wrote in a paper published in Chinese peer-reviewed journal Spacecraft Engineering on February 15.

“They create a huge amount of heat in a short time, and they will burn the semiconductors and integrated circuits in the electronic equipment.”

To combat this, the team designed a device to protect a satellite’s circuitry. So far, they say the test results suggest it could not only help a satellite survive a microwave attack, but also continue to function.


The biggest ground-based high-power microwave weapons – with output of several hundred megawatts – can be used to shoot down a guided missile or make a helicopter lose control, according to the paper.

To test their device, the team simulated microwave attacks at different intensities. They found that a weapon would need an output of at least 1 gigawatt and a 30-metre (98-foot) wide antenna to cripple or jam a protected satellite.

“This power output would be extremely difficult to achieve from an engineering point of view,” the team said in the paper.
They believe the device could also help a satellite withstand attack by a space-based microwave weapon using the strongest beam available from just 30km (19 miles) away.

The device has been designed to detect any unusual rise in conductive electrical current, and to absorb that harmful energy before it can damage the satellite’s critical components.

But adding an extra device to a satellite’s circuitry could affect its performance, and the device itself could burn under intense radiation. Li’s team said they had solved these problems, without elaborating.
They anticipated that the technology would be used on most new satellites launched by China in the future.

According to the paper, it could also help a satellite to maintain communication in the event of electromagnetic warfare. That means if weapons are used to transmit electromagnetic pulses over a wide spectrum of radio frequencies to overwhelm the satellite’s transmitter. Or if they are used to generate signals similar to those sent by ground control to cause confusion.

Li and the team said their device would allow a satellite to communicate in a frequency range too broad to jam and to jump channels at an untraceable speed. It could also potentially be used to identify and filter out fake signals, according to the paper.

But they noted that it was “an increasingly complex situation for security and defence in space”. The scientists said their technology would not be effective forever, as countries continued to make advances in microwave weapons.

The United States military, for example, plans to deploy ground- and space-based directed-energy weapons – including high-power microwave weapons – by 2025. Some are said to be able to generate several gigawatts of microwave pulses.
In Russia, the military is already using high-power microwave weapons.

Meanwhile, Chinese scientists say they have developed a that could be mounted on a satellite and potentially be used to direct shock waves at a target.

DJi mavic 3 sensing ability.

Chinese tech giant Baidu Inc received approval for the commercial operation of its autonomous car service in Yangquan, North China's Shanxi province on Friday, and the company's Apollo Go, also known as Luobo Kuaipao is authorized to provide paid robotaxi services in the city starting Sunday.

Yangquan is the third city across the nation launching commercial autonomous driving vehicle services, after Beijing and Chongqing.

The service provided by Baidu's Apollo Go includes over 30 pickup and drop-off points in government departments, residential areas and high-tech industrial parks at the initial stage, Baidu said. The service is available every day of the week from 9 am to 5 pm.

Baidu Apollo has rolled out robotaxi ride-hailing services in eight cities: Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chongqing, Changsha, Cangzhou and Yangquan, and began commercial operation of autonomous car services in Beijing in November.

As autonomous driving technology continues to mature, the autonomous driving industry is poised to consolidate in the coming years. According to market consultancy IHS Markit, the size of the autonomous car service market will exceed 1.3 trillion yuan ($203.5 billion), with the top-ranked service provider accounting for 40 percent of the market share.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

​

China issues top 10 scientific advances of 2021​

Source: Xinhua
Editor: huaxia
2022-02-28 16:12:46
BEIJING, Feb. 28 (Xinhua) -- China's Ministry of Science and Technology issued a list of the top 10 domestic scientific advances of 2021 Monday.
The selected achievements include the Tianwen-1 Mars probe's successful landing on Mars, the successful launch of China's space station core module Tianhe, and Shenzhou-12 and Shenzhou-13 manned spaceships' successful launch and docking with the core module, according to the list issued by the High Tech Research and Development Center of the ministry.
Other advances include the starch synthesis from carbon dioxide, lunar evolution revealed by lunar samples brought back by the Chang'e-5 mission, mechanism of SARS-CoV-2 evading antiviral drugs, and the world's largest fast radio bursts sample detected by the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope.
The scalable production of high-performing fiber lithium-ion batteries, quantum walks on a programmable two-dimensional 62-qubit superconducting processor, self-powered soft robot swimming in the Mariana Trench, and the causes of bird migration routes and key genes of long-distance migration are also on the list. ■

A Shanghai-based research house published an updated public blockchain service on Saturday, moving one step closer to the city's goal to revolutionize industries and better embrace the "metaverse" era.

Shanghai Tree-Graph Blockchain Research Institute on Saturday released the 2.0 version of Conflux, which it claimed to be "among the top three third-generation public blockchains worldwide".

Compared with its previous version, this iteration has enhanced compatibility and efficiency on different blockchains, thus better facilitating development in the so-called metaverse and Web 3.0 era. It is designed to empower industries such as virtual reality, augmented reality, online games and artificial intelligence, said Long Fan, founder of Tree-Graph Blockchain Research Institute.

According to Long, because the metaverse is real-time, decentralized and has parts that can work together without being specifically instructed to do so, it is easy to imagine how blockchain fits into the vision for the metaverse.

In December, the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Economy and Informatization, which charts the course for the city's technology footprint, mentioned "metaverse" in its five-year plan regarding the development of the electronic information sector.

China's Unitree dog scares cheetahs. That is a nimble little robot.