News on China's scientific and technological development.

Player 0 said:

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Can't say i'm too surprised that this happened, i wonder if the Chinese game industry will benefit from this if they have an excluse OS of their own to monopolize

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t2contra said:

The Chinese game market is big enough and I'm sure the talent is there for the foundation and grow from there. Just keep in mind that the NSA and Google are trying to penetrate every nook and cranny of our lives.

The statement, "One Chinese citizen is quoted as saying: "What does COS stand for? COPY OTHER SYSTEM?" is probably the journalist's own invention. If it is a copy of other systems, it will be too closed like iOS, too fragmented like Android or too insecure like Windows Phone.

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t2contra said:

According to the article that Player posted as link,

"As reported on Engadget China, iOS is too closed, Android is too fragmented, and Windows Phone is too insecure"

It means Windows Phone has vulnerabilities like its Windows OS.

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CHANGCHUN - China CNR Corporation Limited (CNR), one of the country's biggest train makers, announced on Tuesday that it will roll a prototype of hybrid high-speed train off the production line in September 2015.

Changchun Railway Vehicle Co., Ltd (CRC) of CNR will integrate two or three power sources -- electricity, battery pack or diesel engine -- into the trains, according to CNR.

The power sources will form two-in-one or three-in-one power packs depending on operation and rail conditions.

The design speed of the trains will be 160 km per hour, said CNR.

The trains are expected to run on both trunk and branch railways.

They will be widely used compared with traditional trains because of their adaptability to travel on both electric and non-electric railways.

By the end of last year, 52.4 percent of China's railways were electric. This will increase, according to the country's medium and long term railway development plan.

The production of hybrid high-speed trains will serve the country's increasing number of electric railways, according to the CNR.

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The CAS Center for Excellence Quantum Information and Quantum Physics was founded in Hefei, Anhui province, on Wednesday.

The center, based in the University of Science and Technology of China and under the leadership of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, will be built into a top-notch academic institution with an international influence in quantum information and quantum physics, Bai Chunli, president of CAS, said at the founding ceremony.

Earlier this year, the CAS launched a program establishing five top innovation centers in China in wake of President Xi Jinping's call to deepen reform and innovation in science and technology to enhance the nation's strength.

The CAS aims to build the Hefei-based center into a model for the other four centers, specializing in the earth system science of Qinghai-Tibet plateau, particle physics, brain science and thorium molten salt reactors, according to the CAS president.

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As smartphone users continue to debate the relative merits of Google Android and Apple iOS, a new operating system has entered the market, offering a Chinese-developed alternative to software of foreign origin.

The operating system, known as China Operating System, or COS, was developed by the Institute of Software at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, together with Shanghai Lian Tong Network Communication Technology Inc.

The system has a number of key selling points, its developers say, including applicability to a wide range of computer-based hardware, not just smartphones, and the claim that it fixes a range of existing programming bugs and errors.

They also point to COS as a product of Chinese origin.

"The release of COS aims to break the monopoly that foreign companies have on fundamental software, and to introduce an operating system with our own intellectual property rights," said Li Minshu, director of the institute.

By the end of the third quarter of 2013, Google's Android had captured 81 percent of the smartphone market worldwide, leaving 12.9 percent to Apple's iOS, according to media reports.

A report released in October by market researcher Kantar Worldpanel ComTech said Android held a 78.1 percent market share in China, iOS held 15.5 percent and Windows Phone held 3.5 percent.

Chen Feili, deputy general manager of Lian Tong Network Communication Technology, said the next steps in developing COS are to promote its use on a wider range of hardware and to develop more apps.

Wu Yanjun, an ISCAS researcher who led a team to develop the underlying system and generic framework of COS, said the new system differs from Android and iOS in three respects.

First, COS can be applied to a wide range of devices, including personal computers, smartphones, tablets and TV set-top boxes, whereas Android and iOS are mainly open to smartphones and tablets.

Second, COS was not designed to support various online application stores. This is a feature COS has in common with iOS, but not Android, which is compatible with various applications stores.

"We have an official software distribution center, just like Apple's app store, but our Application Programming Interfaces are open and the development platform is free," Wu said.

Third, COS has fixed many logical faults and vulnerabilities together with more than 100 other bugs in the Linux kernel and current open source software.

"With these vulnerabilities gone and with our security enhancement, it's hard for hackers to remotely control your computer or your phone," he said.

Xu Di, 26, a smartphone user, said her decision on whether to use COS depends on the hardware.

"The phone I'm now using runs on Blackberry's operating system, and my computer uses Apple's system. I have to change the hardware first if I want to use COS," Xu said.

"So the next time I buy a new phone or new computer, I'll consider the hardware and the system together."

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China will strive to keep up with the world's transgenic technology development while maintaining rigorous standards for genetically modified food and keeping consumers well informed about such food, the country's top agricultural authority said on Wednesday.

"In the field of (transgenic) molecular-scale seed breeding technology, which is in the vanguard of the world's life science, we as a large agricultural country cannot fall behind," said Chen Xiwen, deputy chief of the Central Rural Work Leading Group.

"In research we must strive to keep up with the advanced level in the world," the senior rural planner for the central government said while answering a question from China Daily at a news conference.

He said China ranks second or third in the world in terms of area devoted to GM crops, which have been a controversial issue globally.

Biosafety certificates have been issued in China for some GM strains of cotton, rice, corn and papaya, with only the cotton and papaya allowed to be planted for commercial purposes, according to the Ministry of Agriculture.

Import certificates for GM crops in China have been granted only for soybeans, corn, rapeseed, cotton and beets, allowing them to be imported as raw materials for domestic processing, it said.

Chen said a GM product must undergo strict examination to ensure it has no side effects before it can be approved for market entry.

Any farm produce containing GM ingredients must be labeled clearly. "We stick to two points for GM food — strict safety assessment and checks, and sufficient information for consumers," Chen said.

He also said he believes it is unlikely that China will introduce GM rice planting on a commercial basis, adding, "We still need to do more research on this."

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