News on China's scientific and technological development.

Figaro said:

China's new quantum research facility

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Click to expand...

“Our plan is that by 2020, or maybe as soon as next year, to achieve ‘quantum supremacy’ with calculation power one million times to all existing computers around the world combined,” Pan was quoted as saying by Anhui Business Daily, which is run by the provincial government.

Click to expand...

China to launch new GPS rival satellites ‘accurate to within millimetres’, website says

PUBLISHED : Wednesday, 13 September, 2017, 9:00pm

(SCMP) China plans to launch its most powerful positioning and navigational satellites later this month, according to an aerospace website, with their makers claiming the technology is accurate to within millimetres.

Two Beidou-3 satellites are expected to be launched on September 29, the website 91fly.cn reported, with developers saying the system was 10 times more precise than GPS.

Evidence that the launch may be imminent was also suggested by the official military newspaper PLA Daily on Monday.

A Yuanwang-class surveillance vessel left a military harbour in eastern China’s Jiangsu province on Sunday for the Pacific Ocean for a satellite tracking mission, the newspaper said, without providing any more details.

An official at Beidou’s operator, the China National Administration of Global Navigation Satellite Systems and Applications, told the South China Morning Post the launch would be “soon”, but did not elaborate.

Beidou-3 is a new generation satellite developed by China to provide positioning and navigation services around the globe. China initiated the Beidou programme, also known as Compass, in the 1990s to compete with GPS, which was developed in the United States.

The 91fly.cn website, run by Chinese aerospace enthusiasts, has previously accurately predicted launch dates. It said the two Beidou-3 satellites would be blasted into orbit on a CZ-3B Long March from a launch centre in Sichuan province.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

The two craft were originally scheduled for launch in July, but the mission was postponed after two consecutive failures of Long March rockets on other satellite missions.

The second failure of a heavy-lifting CZ-5 rocket in early July led to the loss of the largest satellite China had ever built and prompted space authorities to put back further launches.

Li Min, a researcher at the National Engineering Centre for Satellite Positioning Systems at Wuhan University, said Beidou-3 would be the most advanced positioning and navigational satellite on the planet.

“It is the new boy in town ... with some of the latest technology,” said Li, who was involved in China’s military positioning satellite research programmes. He declined to give details of the military applications for the technology.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Yang Yuanxi, deputy chief designer of the Beidou system, told state media earlier this year that the latest satellites would be at least 10 times more precise than existing models.

These were accurate to centimetres, similar to the US-developed GPS, he said.

The satellite navigation system calculates a user’s location by measuring tiny differences in the arrival time of electromagnetic pulses from several positioning probes in the sky, but a new atomic clock on Beidou-3 could reduce the margin of error to a few millimetres.

Li, however, was more cautious, adding that the performance of Beidou-3 would need to be evaluated after use.

“In real life, accuracy is not only affected by atomic clocks, but also how well these satellites work together in a large, sophisticated array,” he said.

The improved accuracy of Beidou-3 would hardly be noticeable to most civilian users, he said. Only the military or organisations authorised by the government, however, would be able to get access to the ultra-high accuracy service for special tasks, he said.

The Beidou programme will need more than 30 of the new satellites to cover every corner of the globe. Over a dozen satellites are still waiting for launch, with the initiation of the global service scheduled before 2020.

The launch of Beidou-3 comes at a politically sensitive time in China, with the five-yearly party congress set to open in Beijing next month. There is likely to be a major reshuffle of the country’s top leadership at the event as President Xi Jinping begins his second term in office.

Click to expand...

Alibaba testing face recognition technology
(

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

) 13:32, September 15, 2017

Two units under internet giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd are working in tandem to test facial recognition technology that will allow users to unlock delivery drop boxes.

Cainiao Network Technology Co Ltd, an Alibaba-backed courier aggregator, is promoting such an application to its partner delivery firms and parcel pickup facility providers in a test run in Shanghai, the company said during a customer conference in Shanghai on Thursday.

The technology is provided by Ant Financial Services Group, Alibaba's fintech subsidiary, which since September has enabled customers to pay by literally flashing a smile in a KFC store in Hangzhou, where Alibaba is headquartered.

An army of specially equipped kiosks have been installed across five locations at Shanghai's financial district of Lujiazui, with cameras scanning people's faces to verify their identities. The companies plan for a nationwide rollout when the pilot projects mature in the city.

In the first instance, the machine would compare the detected face with the image logged by public security authorities, said Chen Jidong, director of biometric identification technology at Ant Financial.

To achieve that, users need to subscribe to a service embedded in the Alipay digital wallet, which gives the app the green light to capture their personal information to confirm their identity, he noted.

This is possible thanks to 550 million real-name users on Alipay, through which they pay bills, settle traffic fines, manage wealth and get small loans.

"The scanning system focuses on your face, so it doesn't matter if you change your makeup or wear a wig," Chen said, adding that multiple tests have been conducted under various environments such as under sunlight or in the dark to ensure a smooth and consistent performance.

A demonstration video displayed during the conference suggested the whole process takes roughly five seconds, significantly shortening the conventional method of parcel retrieval by typing in text codes, which normally takes 16 seconds, the companies said.

"I would expect this investment and new process to save a substantial amount of time and ensure security," said Zou Jianhua, CEO of Diyi Box, a parcel pickup facility provider. "Just in Shanghai, at least 10,000 parcel pickup locations will be equipped with such functionality in three years."

Chen said that the false-acceptance rate, or the chances that the system incorrectly accepts an unauthorized user, should be below 0.001 percent and be further lowered to ensure bank-level security.

Shenzhen-based SF Express, a leading Chinese courier that is competing with Cainiao's network, said it is also developing biometric-based technologies to apply to its own parcel pickup cabinets.

Click to expand...

A new chip for the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) was unveiled on Saturday by the Global Navigation Satellite System and Location Based Service (GNSS & LBS) Association of China (GLAC).

The chip supports the new generation of BeiDou-3 satellites for high-precision navigation and positioning. The positioning accuracy of the chip reaches the sub-meter level without ground-based augmentation.

The chip, developed by Shenzhen-based Allystar Technology, also has uses in unmanned driving systems, wearable devices, precision agriculture and smart logistics.

The value of the satellite navigation and LBS industry stood at 212 billion yuan (31 billion U.S. dollars) in 2016, up 22.1 percent from 2015, according to the GLAC. Core output totaled 80.8 billion yuan, 70 percent of which came from BDS.

Four BeiDou-3 satellites will be launched by the end of this year, and a complete global satellite navigation system in place around 2020, according Yang Changfeng, the system's chief designer.

The scale of the BDS industry will reach 240 billion yuan around 2020, said Yang.

Click to expand...

China makes breakthrough in anti-corrosion coating
Source:Xinhua Published: 2017/9/17 18:45:08

China has achieved a major breakthrough in heavy-duty anti-corrosion coating by using modified graphene, according to the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

The results were achieved by scientists led by researcher Wang Liping and academician Xue Qunji through years of research and development.

Identified by the Chinese Society for Corrosion and Protection, the new coating can be used in the state grid, petrochemical engineering, and marine engineering and equipment.

It will change the monopoly by foreign products in heavy-duty anti-corrosion coating in China and protect engineering equipment in the country's tropical marine areas.

According to the CAS, China has an anti-corrosion coating market worth 200 billion yuan (30.6 billion US dollars), including heavy-duty coating with an average annual growth rate of more than 20 percent.

Click to expand...

Figaro said:

China anti-corrosion technology

Click to expand...

Equation said:

I wonder if this coating can be use on ships that goes out to the sea as well. This would reduce the need to repaint the hull caused by the salty sea and air.

Click to expand...

UN atomic chief praises China's CAP1400 nuclear reactor
Source: Xinhua Published: 2017/9/19 7:24:49

The head of the UN nuclear watchdog on Monday praised China's CAP1400 nuclear reactors, saying the conception of these reactors is "very important for the future of nuclear energy".

CAP1400 is China's self-developed and updated version of third-generation nuclear technology.

Yukiya Amano, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), made the remark after visiting Chinese information stand over nuclear energy development at a nuclear energy exhibition during IAEA's annual General Conference in Vienna.

After Japan's Fukushima nuclear accident in 2011, the center of expansion of use of nuclear power is shifting to the East, with China and India being the centers of the expansion, he said.

China and IAEA enjoy comprehensive cooperation in nuclear energy, as well as nuclear safety, Amano said.

He recalled his visit to China's national center of nuclear security in Beijing in April, saying that "that is very impressive facility and we are very grateful you made the facility available for us", he said.

China had 35 nuclear reactors in commercial operation as of the end of 2016, according to the China Nuclear Energy Association.

Total installed nuclear power capacity in the country jumped 23.8 percent year on year to 33.64 million KW at the end of 2016, and China plans to increase that figure to 58 million KW by 2020, official data show.

Click to expand...