News on China's scientific and technological development.

RedMercury said:

China should counter bans on dual use technology with bans on dual use rare earth metals.

Click to expand...

Don't worry about it because there will a point in the near future where those that have bans on things China wants today won't be able to offer anything China needs. Just like today other countries won't sell what China wants but they expect China to buy what it can make for itself and at a lesser cost, soon it will be the same for what China wants from them.

The last time the Chinese thought that the outside world had nothing to offer , they went backward so fast it would have been soul destroying. I Cant see them being so stupid as to make that mistake again or maybe they are?

I know... confidence in a non-Westerner is equivalent to threating to use nukes. All I said was what China wants that can't get from the West it will figure out how to make on its own. The experience and knowledge will be more valuable. Nothing wrong with that and as many US companies are seeing is that they suffer from losing to other competitors because of all the red tape they have to go though. So unless the US is planning to push opium onto China, all is good. I know this is suppose to be a tactic to get China to submit holding out hostage whatever what China wants and can't get. Chinese aren't suppose to think they can do it on their own instead of being dependent. This is like back in the 90s where it was said that all of China's fighter airframes were getting old and falling apart and thus China will soon have no air force because it couldn't make fighters on its on. Or the memorable new member in here a couple years ago that declared, "China had no AWACS what-so-ever!" Haven't heard from him since he was shown otherwise. Or China was to the least tens years away from conducting a ASAT test... So many "experts" said China can't do this or that and yet they did. I especially like when people say China is filled with starving people and they live in straw huts and have only dirt roads. Or before the Wen Ho Lee scandal, many believed China didn't have any nukes because they weren't intellectually capable of putting together a nuclear bomb. China defying what so many people arrogantly think... doesn't bold well for their future getting it so wrong. On another note that was different... back then the West wanted to sell. Today the West doesn't want to sell so it's not the same especially when they will never sell it in the first place even when China can make an equivalent. It's called capitalism when one doesn't need to buy that it can make on its own and less expensive. China has supercomputers and yet the US won't sell their equivalent. Are they going to whine about China not buying what they won't sell in the first place? For the voters, they will. And probably the most important difference from back then... China has nukes to use on anyone that wants to force them at gunpoint to buy things they don't need.

Ah Ha theres some good for a nation of heavy smokers

Cigarette butts could prevent steel corrosion, find scientists



Research conducted by scientists from School of Energy and Power Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, China and sponsored by China National Petroleum Corporation (China’s state oil firm) found that remains of used cigarettes may let out environment-harming chemicals but the same are useful in preventing steel from corroding when waterlogged.

ABC News quoted lead researcher, Jun Zhao, Ph.D. student, Xi’an Jiaotong University as saying, “When people walk on the streets, they usually see cigarette butts scattered everywhere, on the ground or the grass. I felt it was quite significant to do a project related to environmental protection.”

Research details
For the research, scientists soaked cigarette butts in hydrochloric acid at 90 degrees Celsius (194 degrees F) and identified nine chemicals in them, including nicotine.

They tested the material on N80 oil tube steel discs used in oil industry by applying the chemical extracts on to it.

It was found that chemical extracts acted as anti-corroding elements and guarded the steel against oxidization.

Researchers explained the phenomena with the fact that a compound material produced from burning nicotine and tar protected against corrosion.

The cigarette remains used for the research were taken from roads and garbage.

Further research required
In addition, the team planned on more research to study the effects of chemical in preventing corrosion in other metals.

According to available data, the corrosion of steel oil pipes costs oil producers millions of dollars for repairs or replacements each year.

Reuters quoted the study authors as saying, “4.5 trillion Cigarette butts find their way into the environment each year. Apart from being an eyesore, they contain toxins that can kill fish.”

However, the researchers added, “The findings of this research provide a practical use for cigarette butts.”

Guy D. Davis, materials consultant and previous researcher in the field, stated that the findings were very convincing. He was quoted by The Associated Press as saying, “Tobacco seems to be one of the best plant-based inhibitors of corrosion.”

On the contrary, Davis added, use of tobacco to protect metals against decaying has its limitations. It plays the part of a nutrient for mold over time and develops a repugnant odor, stated the researcher.

The study appears in the journal Industrial and Engineering Chemistry Research.

China slips in ranking of Asia's top colleges

Despite investing billions of dollars to create world-class seats of learning, China lags in a new list of Asia’s top colleges. Its highest-ranked Peking University came in 12th, down two spots from last year.

*By Peter Ford, Staff writer / May 13, 2010
Beijing

Hong Kong universities top a new ranking of Asian seats of learning published today, far outstripping their rivals in mainland China.



No mainland university made the top 10 on the list, compiled by the London-based QS, a higher education information company. It was dominated instead by institutions in Hong Kong and Japan.

That did not surprise Prof. Zhang Ming, a professor of politics at Renmin University in Beijing. “Chinese universities are getting worse, and they are getting worse fast,” plagued by bureaucracy and plagiarism, he says bitterly.

The top mainland university, Peking University, came 12th on the list – ahead of its great rival Tsinghua, which trailed in 16th place. These results, poorer than last year’s rankings, will disappoint Chinese education officials “who have been throwing billions of dollars at universities for the past 12 years,” says Prof. David Zweig, who teaches at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (2nd in the table, behind Hong Kong University).

QS says it ranked Asia’s top 200 universities by criteria such as academic peer review, staff-to-student ratios, citations, and the number of foreign teachers and students on campus.

The results could be skewed against Chinese universities because much top-level scientific research on the mainland is done not in university laboratories but at the Chinese Academy of Science, suggests Professor Zweig.
'Quantity, not quality'

But Chinese universities’ own problems are at the heart of their poor showings against international rivals, says Professor Zhang.

“Universities are run by bureaucrats as if they were government departments, and they focus on quantity, not on quality,” he complains. “The government won’t change that because they are afraid of losing control,” he adds.

“It is no coincidence that the top universities (in today’s rankings) are in the freest places,” Zhang argues. “There is no academic freedom in China…and plagiarism generally goes unpunished. What can you expect from an academic atmosphere in which plagiarism is rampant?”
Behind global peers




No mainland Chinese universities figure among the top 50 in the world according to the QS rankings, despite an intensive program launched in 1998 by former President Jiang Zemin which has spent $4 billion in a bid to create world-class universities.

That is largely due to the low quality of many Chinese professors, says David Shambaugh, director of the China Policy Program at George Washington University. “They are not part of the global discourse except in economics and some natural sciences,” he says. “When they write papers for international journals they generally don’t get past peer review.”

The lack of academic freedom under the ruling Communist party may be one factor pushing top faculty to leave mainland China for posts elsewhere. At Hong Kong’s University of Science and Technology, for example, “the faculty is a mix of overseas professors, local Hong Kongers, and mainlanders,” says Zweig. “It is a very collaborative and open environment

I believe there is a massive brain drain happening in China right now. As the article suggested, the best faculty in China is leaving the country for better opportunities with more pay and research positions elsewhere, like the US, Canada and Australia. Not only the faculty, but some of the brightest students. There are a lot of mainland Chinese professors here, not only in my school but all throughout schools in Ontario - U of Toronto, U of Waterloo, Western Ontario etc. The atmosphere is simply more academic and welcoming to dedicated faculty. I don't have the statistics for UW, but for the university in my hometown, Calgary, the U of Calgary has about 600 Chinese International Students alone, mostly in the business faculty. With so many bright students going overseas to study, it certainly doesn't help the Chinese universities (although the impact of this is debatable, I don't have hard numbers of how many percent of the top percentile in high school goes overseas).

What China needs to do (and soon, before brain drain really becomes a problem) is to put in place some policies that encourage the good faculty and top students to stay in Chinese universities instead of going to Harvard or U of T. This includes improving the researchers' and professors' pay, providing an extensive system of academic rewards and grants, and put in place a fair system of student loans. It also needs to put in place some measures to attract international faculty, like getting visas for them easier. From my experience, good universities not only attract faculty from its home country, but from all corners of the globe. Granted though, getting past the Chinese language barrier isn't the easiest thing to do for an accomplished 50 year old prof, who's been speaking English all his life.

With regards to retaining the top high school students in China, a good way to do so would be offering them loans to good universities in China that outweigh the benefits of going overseas to study. There are a lot of "international schools" in China that specifically focus on getting Chinese students to go international after high school. They teach in English, teach all the curriculum of the countries they're aiming to get into (for example, an international school would teach the curriculum of Canada if the students are expected to go to U of Toronto or U of Waterloo after graduation). I think this is the perfect way to encourage brain drain in a country and should be discouraged.

In the end, Chinese universities do need to improve their educational standards and establish/retain important ties with the industry and global academia. This is a very important point in ensuring the quality of education at an university.

I wouldn't be so quick to accept that article as gospel. For starters, they base the "decline of Chinese universities" off of ONE year of them going down a couple spots. Check out the highly respected ARWU rankings:



As you can see in this 2009 list, there are 6 mainland Chinese universities in the top 300 in the world: Nanjing University, Peking University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Tsinghua University, University of Science and Technology of China, and Zhejiang University. Compare that to the rankings from 2003:



Back then there was one lone representative from mainland China: Tsinghua University. So based off of this they have made some headway.

First of all, about the cigarrette butt, I am surprised that people at one of the best universities would do this kind of research, and especially in this sloppy fashion. This is the kind of random stuff that would only be thought of by some third-tier university professor. Especially, HOW they did it was saddening. They got the butts from streets and garbage. they intend to test the effect of nicotine on steel corrosion, but those butts they got from the streets and garbage could contain many other things, like the leftover food, saliva of the smokers, make-up and lipstick of female smokers, along with possibly thousands of chemicals. How can one obtain any conclusion from these experiments?? It could be any or all of the chemicals found on those butts. How can the data be expanded?? Since the data cannot be directly linked to effect of nocotine, should people go out on the streets and collect cigarette butts and hope these butts would contain whatever chemicals needed to get the effect you want??

I think it is the attitude of the researchers in China that is causing the degradation of the quality of Chinese universities. It is NOT the lack of talent. China is a big country and has lots of talents. However, the change in attitude toward scientific research is even more worrisome since this is more important than talent...

vesicles said:

First of all, about the cigarrette butt, I am surprised that people at one of the best universities would do this kind of research, and especially in this sloppy fashion. This is the kind of random stuff that would only be thought of by some third-tier university professor............
However, the change in attitude toward scientific research is even more worrisome since this is more important than talent...

Click to expand...

Great points.....as a fellow scientific researcher, aren't there channels open for you to express your concern with the way the research was conducted?

vesicles said:

First of all, about the cigarrette butt, I am surprised that people at one of the best universities would do this kind of research, and especially in this sloppy fashion. This is the kind of random stuff that would only be thought of by some third-tier university professor. Especially, HOW they did it was saddening. They got the butts from streets and garbage. they intend to test the effect of nicotine on steel corrosion, but those butts they got from the streets and garbage could contain many other things, like the leftover food, saliva of the smokers, make-up and lipstick of female smokers, along with possibly thousands of chemicals. How can one obtain any conclusion from these experiments?? It could be any or all of the chemicals found on those butts. How can the data be expanded?? Since the data cannot be directly linked to effect of nocotine, should people go out on the streets and collect cigarette butts and hope these butts would contain whatever chemicals needed to get the effect you want??

I think it is the attitude of the researchers in China that is causing the degradation of the quality of Chinese universities. It is NOT the lack of talent. China is a big country and has lots of talents. However, the change in attitude toward scientific research is even more worrisome since this is more important than talent...

Click to expand...

Wasn't the point of the study to test what to do with said garbage butts? It wouldn't be very relevant to have nice clean ones when the focus of the testing was for possible uses of exactly what you're criticizing, that is, the usage of random used cigarettes.

Now that they've discovered what the garbage can do, now they can try to test clean ones for the specific chemicals involved. You never know, maybe it's the very act of using a cigarette that causes a particular chemical change, without which the cigarette butt wouldn't have the same anti-corrosive effects.

Maybe I'm just rambling, but I honestly think that there's nothing inherently wrong with using garbage cigarettes when the entire focus of the tests was about what to do with garbage cigarettes.