News on China's scientific and technological development.

SHANGHAI - Chinese research vessel and icebreaker Xuelong (Snow Dragon) left Shanghai on Thursday, setting sail on the country's 30th scientific expedition to Antarctica.

The 256 member team include scientists from Taiwan and Thailand. The average age is 36, with the oldest 61 and the youngest 21, according to Liu Shunlin, chief scientist and leader of the team.

The team will work on 30 assignments, take supplies to China's Antarctic stations, set up a fourth research station, the "Taishan", and chose a site for another new station.

The expedition will last for 155 days, covering 31,500 nautical miles over its entire course. The team is expected to return home in April, 2014.

China launched its first expedition to the Antarctic in 1984 and has already established the Changcheng Station, Zhongshan Station and Kunlun Station.

Click to expand...

NANNING - Chinese doctors have discovered and registered a new mutant gene for alpha-thalassemia, first of its kind worldwide, an advance that enriches the gene database to assist researches into cures for genetic disease.

Li Youqiong and colleagues from the People's Hospital of Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, discovered this gene, a 21.9, after a series of experiments on a carrier of the hereditary disease in 2011.

Thalassemia is a disease where the carrier is missing or has malfunctioning genes responsible for making hemoglobin, the blood protein that helps to carry oxygen around the body.

The hemoglobin molecule has subunits commonly referred to as alpha and beta.

The mutant gene was identified by the end of 2012 before it was added to the GenBank database in the U.S.-based National Center for Biotechnology Information(NCBI) and then disclosed to public on October1 2013, according to Li.

There is no effective cure for alpha-thalassemia, and the discovery of the new mutation will help prevention and research into the disease while preparing theoretical basis for future gene therapy.

There are three main genetic sequence databases worldwide, which comprises the DNA Data bank of Japan(DDBJ),the European Molecular Biology Laboratory(EMBL) and GenBank at NCBI. These three organizations exchange data on a daily basis.

Click to expand...

Chinese childcare portal babytree.com launched a smart watch for pregnant women on Thursday.

The website has teamed up with leading hardware manufacturers to produce the device, according to company head Wang Huainan.

The company has started taking preorders for the product, which is priced at 1,499 yuan ($250).

Named "B-smart", the watch will help detect key physiological indicators, including any change in the mother's weight, quickening heart rate, contraction of the uterus, etc.

The watch is equipped with a 1.5-inch high-solution touch-sensitive screen and a 5-million-pixel camera, and it runs on the Android operating system.

Data collected by the watch can be transmitted to a mobile application developed by babytree.

Smart watch devices are set to gain in popularity in 2014, according to consultancy firm Juniper Research. The market is expected to grow from $1.4 billion in 2013 to $18 billion in 2018.

Major technology companies, including Apple Inc, Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and Sony Corp, have also launched smart devices to ride the latest mobile boom.

Click to expand...

WASHINGTON - China's Tianhe-2, a supercomputer capable of operating as fast as 33.86 petaflops per second (Pflop/s), remains the world's most powerful system, according to a biannual Top500 list of supercomputers released Monday.

Tianhe-2, developed by China's National University of Defense Technology, put China back at the top of the list in June. It is almost twice as fast as the next computer on the list, Titan of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), which has a performance of 17.59 Pflop/s.

"The Tianhe-2 is a very powerful computing system," Jack Dongarra, professor of the University of Tennessee and Top500 editor, told Xinhua. "It has almost two times the performance of the number 2 system, Titan. I wouldn't be surprised if it was in the number 1 position for another year."

Except for its computing chips, Tianhe-2 uses technologies that have almost all been developed and built in China, including the interconnect system, operating system, front-end processors and software.

"The major challenge is for China to develop the computing chip technology so it can build the whole computer with Chinese parts. Application software also presents a great challenge," Dongarra said.

In November 2010, Tianhe-2's predecessor, Tianhe-1A, took the first spot but was overtaken by Japan's K computer six months later. Tianhe-1A is now No.12 on the list.

Sequoia, installed at the DOE's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, is again the No. 3 system with a performance of 17.17 Pflop/s. Japan's K computer is the No. 4 system with 10.51 Pflop/s, followed by Mira, installed at the DOE's Argonne National Laboratory, which has a performance of 8.59 Pflop/s.

The new entry in the Top10, Piz Daint, is at No. 6. The machine installed at the Swiss National Supercomputing Center achieved 6.27 Pflop/s. It is now the most powerful system in Europe and also the most energy efficient system in the Top10.The total combined performance of all 500 systems on the list is 250 Pflop/s, according to the list. Half of the total performance is achieved by the top 17 systems on the list, with the other half of the total performance spread among the remaining 483 systems.

Overall, the United States is "clearly the leading consumer" of the supercomputing systems with 265 entries on the list. As a nation, China holds the No. 2 position with 63 entries, behind the United States but ahead of Japan, Britain, France and Germany, the list showed.

The Top500 list, released twice a year since June 1993, is considered the authoritative ranking of the world's supercomputers. It is compiled on the basis of the machines' performance on the so-called Linpack benchmark by Dongarra and other experts from the United States and Germany.

Click to expand...

QINGDAO -- Construction of China's national deep-sea base kicked off on Friday in the coastal city of Qingdao in East China's Shandong province.

Liu Feng, director of the administration center of the base, said it will become a multi-functional platform that will enable China to study and explore the ocean.

With an investment of over 500 million yuan ($82 million), the base will cover about 26 hectares of land and 62.7 hectares of sea in Jimo city, serving as a support station for deep-sea facilities, including Jiaolong, China's manned submersible.

The base is designed to include a construction and maintenance workshop, a scientific research building, a large pool for experimental dives, and training facilities, according to Liu.

Approved by the State Council in January 2007, the construction of the base is planned to be finished by the end of 2014, and it should be put into operation in 2015.

Click to expand...

A hospital in Wuhan has carried out 47 successful artificial cornea transplants, Chutian Metropolis Daily reported on Friday.

Up to 5 million people require cornea transplants every year in China. This number far exceeds corneas donated, about 5,000.

China started biological tests on artificial corneas in 2010 in five hospitals.

The tests involved 115 patients, of whom 47 actually received artificial cornea transplants in Wuhan Union Hospital. The operations had a 100 percent success rate.

Click to expand...