News on China's scientific and technological development.

FairAndUnbiased said:

@ACuriousPLAFan

Remember me talking about Stirling engines in mini-SSKNs? 说曹操曹操到。

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Similar to how hydroelectric dams generate power, a Stirling unit converts heat into electrical energy through a series of piston-driven magnets.

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gelgoog said:

These space based Stirling engines are tiny in comparison to what you would use in a submarine. They are used when available thermoelectric generators aren't powerful enough.

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sunnymaxi said:

Missed this biggest technological breakthrough News.

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World's first interventional BCI experiment in non-human primates successfully carries out in Beijing

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The world's first interventional brain-computer interface (BCI) experiment in non-human primates was successfully completed in Beijing on Thursday. It carries important significance in promoting brain science field research and signaled that China's BCI technology - a sector at the forefront of a white-hot technology war between China and the US - has jumped to internationally leading levels, industry insiders said.

An interventional electroencephalograph was attached to a monkey's cerebrovascular wall through minimally invasive surgery, after which technicians were able to identify and collect electroencephalograph (EEG) signals. Based upon these signals, active control over a mechanical arm was achieved.

Ma Yongjie, who is participating in the interventional BCI experiment project, was quoted as saying in a Beijing Daily report published on Friday that the experiment is based on a previous interventional BCI trial on sheep.

The successful completion of the experiment represents a "leap forward" in China's EEG signals technologies, from passively collecting to actively controlling, the report said. It also marks breakthroughs in a number of technologies, including the collection of EEG in blood vessels and identification of interventional EEG.

The experiment was led by Nankai University professor Duan Feng's team, and jointly completed by Chinese People's Liberation Army General Hospital and Shanghai HeartCare Medical Technology Co.

Interventional BCI, along with invasive BCI and non-invasive BCI, are the three main technologies under research and development (R&D) involving this emerging bioscience sector.

A manager at a Chinese BCI device company, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the Global Times on Friday that the US, represented by technology company Neuralink founded by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, has a clear edge in invasive BCI technology thanks to an early start. China excels in non-invasive technology, as it is a forerunner in decoding and brain-computer system applications.

"In the invasive BCI field, China's gaps with foreign rivals are quite large. Against this backdrop, the breakthrough in interventional BCI could be a great catch-up with foreign competitors," the manager said.

Invasive BCI technology generally involves craniotomy surgery to install electrodes around the cerebral cortex zone. While this results in the most accurate EEG among the three technologies, such an invasive mode would inevitably cause harm to the human body, and could lead to an inflammatory response and rejection, according to industry insiders.

Non-invasive technology collects EEG through the epicranium, and is a much safer way compared with the invasive mode, but the EEG collected is of inferior quality.

Interventional BCI is somewhere between the two, as it achieves brain-computer connection through minimally invasive surgery similar to a heart stent. It causes less harm to the human body than invasive tech, while its EEG quality is superior to that of non-invasive tech.

Ma said that it would take five years or even longer for the interventional BCI technology to be mature enough for clinical use, the Beijing Daily reported.

"Completing trials on animals is a ground-breaking progress, and a step from zero to one. But there's still a long way to go, as [developing technology] for clinical application is a prolonged process from one to 100," Ma noted.

In the next stage, Ma said the team will optimize the electrode design, verify the safety and reliability of devices installed in animals' bodies for the long term, as well as further analyze and process the EEG collected.

As for the wider application of BCI technology, Ma said that certain scenes from science fiction are achievable, such as the direct display of human being's minds and driving vehicles using consciousness, but that would take a quite long time.

In 2020, Chinese scientists successfully implanted two microelectrodes into the brain of a 72-year-old male patient whose body had been paralyzed from the neck down, which then linked his central nervous system to a mechanical arm. He was able to control the arm through natural signals from his brain after the surgery.

It was reportedly the first successful BCI operation on an elderly patient in China. Ma said it was also China's most advanced BCI clinical application to date.

China syncs monkey brain with a computer in a 'world first' experiment The development demonstrates that China is allegedly at the forefront of the "white-hot technology war between China and the US," claims Chinese state-run media..

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The Institute of Chemistry has made progress in the biomimetic application of organic electrochemical transistors​

　　Biomimetic devices promote the development of smart electronics by combining the simulation and research of living organisms, and the object recognition ability of smart electronics is an important option to replace human senses, which enables it to interact with the real world. However, current technologies for object recognition are limited by high operating voltages, complex peripheral circuits, and mostly rely on electron transport, which is incompatible with the ion transport of neurotransmitters in living organisms.
Organic electrochemical transistors are a class of organic transistors with broad application prospects. The channel is in direct contact with the electrolyte, and the channel conductance is adjusted by ion doping and dedoping. This property enables it to act as a low operating voltage ( < 1 V ) sensing signal amplifier, and the ion-electron interaction enables it to serve as an interface between biology and electronics. Therefore, using electrochemical transistors to develop low-power, multi-sensing, and biocompatible biomimetic systems is a feasible solution.
Recently, the team of Liu Yunqi, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and a researcher at the Key Laboratory of the Institute of Organic Solids, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, launched innovative explorations in the field of low-voltage bionic devices and made important progress. For the first time, researchers have proposed a tactile/taste ionoreceptor based on an all-polymer electrochemical transistor (Fig. 1A). Each layer of the sensor is composed of a polymer material that is highly biocompatible and flexible. Benefiting from the inherent ionization properties, its operating voltage is only 0.1 V, which is 1 to 2 orders of magnitude lower than that of reported artificial sensory receptor devices. Meanwhile, a single device can accurately recognize multiple target objects perceived by the human tactile and gustatory systems without complicated peripheral circuits (Fig. 1B). In addition, the low device density of electrochemical transistors hinders its further application. To address this issue, the researchers patterned the device using 172 nm excimer UV lithography, using poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene): polystyrene sulfonate (PEDOTSS) as the source of the device, Drain, gate and active layer, finally successfully prepared a flexible transistor array with a channel length of 2 μm, a device density of 104167/cm 2 , and a yield of 97% (Figure 1C), and the device density is higher than other reported values Out of 1–5 orders of magnitude. Relevant research results were recently published in "Advanced Materials" ( Advanced Materials ).​