News on China's scientific and technological development.

LONDON - Times Higher Education published its new world universities rankings Wednesday. Universities from the Chinese mainland climbed up with two edging into top 50.

Peking University creeps up one place to 45th, while Tsinghua University rises two places to joint 50th.

"Both universities improve their positions and edge closer to the best in the world. Both act as national flagship institutions, attracting global talent and inspiring others," said Phil Baty, editor of Times Higher Education Rankings.

Four other universities entered the list of top 300, namely the Fudan University, the University of Science and Technology of China, the Renmin University and the Nanjing University.

The Shanghai Jiao Tong University, the Wuhan University of Technology, the Zhejiang University and the Sun Yat-sen University followed, bringing the total number of universities from the Chinese mainland on the top 400 list to 10.

The University of Hong Kong fell eight places to 43rd, but the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and the Chinese University of Hong Kong reached 57th and 109th.

Thirteen indicators across five areas have been taken into account, making this world rankings to examine the core missions of a modern global university that included research, teaching, knowledge transfer and international activity.

On top of the list is the California Institute of Technology as last year, followed by Harvard University and the University of Oxford as joint second. The University of Cambridge is the seventh. (

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

)

Japan's University of Tokyo maintains its status as Asia's number one and moves up four places to 23rd. The National University of Singapore holds on to second place in the region, moving from 29th to 26th and overtaking Australia's University of Melbourne in the process.

There are 26 countries and regions in the world top 200 list.

The United States took seven of the top 10 places, with 77 institutions in top 200. Britain followed suit, with 31 universities in the top 200. The Netherland and Germany had 12 and 10 places respectively to secure the second and third positions in Europe.

But Baty noticed a trend of East Asian universities rising up. "More Asian institutions are nipping at the heels of the best in the West, increasingly occupying world top 50 places and showing no signs of letting up," he said.

Click to expand...

BEIJING - China received nearly 140,000 new software copyright registrations in 2012, a year-on-year increase of 27.33 percent, according to the latest figures.

The statistics were revealed Monday in a report on China's software copyright registrations in 2012, which was drafted by the Copyright Protection Center of China (CPCC).

Of last year's total registrations, eastern regions accounted for nearly 80 percent. Meanwhile, the central and western regions of China saw faster growth rates with increases eight and five percentage points higher than the country's average, respectively, the report said.

According to the report, last year's registrations for cloud computing software totaled 1,946, a year-on-year increase of 119 percent, while cell phone gaming application registrations reached 1,739, up by 74 percent year on year. China began to register software copyrights in 1992 in a bid to protect the rights of software owners.

Click to expand...

BEIJING - A surgeon in China says he has constructed an extra nose out of a man's rib cartilage and implanted it under the skin of his forehead to prepare for a transplant in probably the first operation of its kind.

Surgeon Guo Zhihui at Fujian Medical University Union Hospital in China's southeastern province of Fujian spent nine months cultivating the graft for a 22-year-old man whose nose was damaged.

The striking images of the implant - with the nostril section facing diagonally upward on the left side of the man's forehead - drew widespread publicity after they began to circulate in Chinese media this week. Guo plans to cut the nose from the forehead while leaving a section of skin still connected, and then rotate and graft it into position in a later operation.

"We were just interested in helping the man and did not expect it would stir up this much attention," Guo said in an interview Friday with The Associated Press.

Surgeons previously have used cartilage to help rebuild noses in their proper position and are experimenting with growing new ones from stem cells on other parts of the body, such as a forearm. But this was the first known case of building a nose on a forehead.

Alexander Seifalian, a professor of nanotechnology and regenerative medicine at University College London who has worked on transplants using stem cells, said implanting the nose graft in the forehead makes sense because the skin there has the same "structure and texture" as that of a nose.

However, he said it was unclear why the Chinese team built the nose on the forehead rather than in its proper position. A nose graft grown from stem cells would be prepared on another body part first, but this operation is using existing cartilage, Seifalian said.

"They could have made the nose and just put it on the nose, not in the forehead," Seifalian said. "I don't know why they put it there."

However, Seifalian noted that he had not seen any scientific information on the Chinese operation and was just going by media reports.

The patient lost part of his nose in an accident in August 2012 and did not immediately have any reconstruction surgery because he couldn't afford it, Guo said. An infection later ate away much of his nose cartilage, he said.

Guo said his team examined what remained of the nose and concluded there would be little chance of viably grafting cartilage there, instead building the nose on the forehead. When the new nose is rotated into position and grafted, it will at first have its own blood supply from links to the forehead, before developing new blood vessels. Later surgery will smooth out all of the skin.

The team first expanded skin on the man's forehead for more than three months before using rib cartilage to build the nose bridge. Lastly, Guo's team built the nostrils.

"We sculpted the nose three-dimensionally, like carpenters," he said.

Click to expand...

Quickie said:

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

English.news.cn 2013-10-11 16:17:12



BEIJING, Oct. 11 (Xinhua) -- An unmanned autonomous underwater vehicle developed by Chinese scientists has successfully completed in a dive to 5,080 meters in the open sea, the State Oceanic Administration said on Friday.

The unmanned vehicle "Qianlong-1" is a robot that can travel to a depth of 6,000 meters.

The vehicle, tasked to explore the sea bed and collect hydrological data, is about 4.6 meters long, 1,500 kg in weight and 0.8 meters in diameter.

The vehicle, on board of the Chinese research vessel "Haiyang-6," left Honolulu, Hawaii, on Sept. 28 for the eastern Pacific Ocean and with the first dive on Oct. 6.

It operated underwater for about eight hours and successfully resurfaced.

This task is a trial run for the vehicle and the first time an Chinese autonomous underwater vehicle has been used for a scientific expedition.

The vehicle is the latest achievement in China's oceanic technological endeavors, following its a manned submersible and a remote-control underwater vehicle.

The manned submersible "Jiaolong" set a record in June 2012 by reaching 7,062 meters in the Pacific Ocean's Mariana Trench.

Click to expand...

Breakthrough in maize high-yielding cultivation technology

Source: Institute of Crop Sciences

Recently, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS), Shihezi University and Agricultural Bureau of Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCG) developed and demonstrated the high-yielding maize cultivation technology in field experiment. Ministry of Agriculture tested the yield of 30 mu, found the highest yield was 1511.74 kg/mu (22676.1 kg/ha) which made a new high-yielding record.



Professor Li Shao-Kun, the chief expert of crop cultivation and physiology innovative team in the Institute of Crop Science, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (ICS-CAAS), introduced that for exploiting maize yield potential, the research team set up a yield goal of 1,500 kg per mu based on the domestic and international experience in maize high-yielding and analysis of light and heat resources in the main maize planting regions.

Since 2006, they have conducted researches on high-yielding theory and technology and carried out high-yielding experiments in more than 10 ecological regions in many provinces (autonomous regions) such as Xinjiang, Ningxia, Gansu, Shaanxi and Shandong. It took 8 years for them to achieve the goal of over 1500 kg yield this year. In 2009, 2011 and 2012, they already hit national records three times with 1360.1 kg, 1385.4 kg and 1410.3 kg per mu respectively.



Professor Li said that six key technologies were adopted in the high-yielding fields:
-to increase soil fertility by means of returning straw and adding organic fertilizer to the fields;
-to choose new high-yielding cultivars which are suitable for high density and mechanized production;
-to take the method of high-density planting, 8700-8800 plants per mu with wide-and-narrow row arrangement;
-to build high-quality and lodging-resistant groups by means of controlling maize growth in the early growing stage and promoting maize growth in the late growing stage, and combination of fertilizer, water and plant growth regulators;
-to meet nutrient requirement for high-yielding maize by means of drip irrigation and water-and-fertilizer integration;
-to strengthen field management by means of mechanical tillage, precision planting, pest prevention and control, timely late harvest, mechanical grain harvest and other technical measures.

Click to expand...