News on China's scientific and technological development.

via onebyone from Pakdef with 2 to 3 million STEM graduate every year eventually they will breach the boundary of Science and technology. Add to that the returning sea turtle, plenty of money and research lab nothing that will prevent China to reach the pinnacle of Science and technology

Stories for expanding horizons.

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Photographer: Anthony Kwan/Bloomberg

Since entering the White House, Donald Trump has been threatening to hack back federal expenditure in line with his campaign promises, and aggressive funding cuts are likely to feature in the October budget if cross-party opposition does not take shape in the coming days. Nowhere will these cuts weigh more heavily than for Science and Technology (S&T), where U.S. dominance is already under sustained pressure from major investments by China in everything from artificial intelligence to precision medicine.



Trump’s a Presidential Science Advisor is just the latest indication that he lacks a detailed understanding of the strategic importance of S&T - or the determination to give it sufficient priority. So, with the science community lacking leadership and facing significant budget cuts, how can the U.S. be expected to prepare a coherent national response to the scientific opportunities and technical challenges of the 21st century?

This lack of focus in the U.S. presents an opportunity for China to establish a more central role in the rapidly evolving global innovation system, but whether its current momentum translates into leadership of the broader S&T community will depend on whether the Middle Kingdom can continue to narrow the gap in some key areas:

Turning the tide with growing research credentials

Even in the biomedical and clinical research area where the U.S. has traditionally been strongest, there is a growing threat to U.S. predominance that can be measured by counting the number of articles published in high and mid-ranking journals. This trend look set to further intensify following recent reforms of China's S&T system which now provides major career incentives to authors for the publication of articles in top-tier Western journals.

By another measure of international academic influence, the Japan Science and Technology Agency

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in June 2017 ranking China and the U.S. as the most influential countries in four of eight core scientific fields, by analyzing the top 10% of the most referenced studies in each field and the authors’ country of origin. China came first in computer science, mathematics, materials science and engineering, while the U.S. led the way in physics, environmental and earth sciences, basic life science and clinical medicine.

Returning talent strengthens R&D resources

In recent years, China has taken several initiatives to speed up its transformation from the world’s manufacturing hub into a leading global innovation center by prioritizing the development of talent to drive its growth in R&D through a number of . One of the best known is the which was launched in 2008 to provide highly favorable benefits and start-up packages such as a research budget of up to RMB 3 million for each successful applicant in the Youth Program and RMB 3.5 million over a three-year period to each returning expert who joins the main 1000-Talent Program. This targeted approach has already led to the return from overseas of over 5,000 leading scientists and entrepreneurs and helped them to set up research teams and facilities in order to develop long-term careers on the mainland.

Provinces and cities across China have joined the competition to attract skilled talent by launching their own schemes; for example, Heilongjiang province in North Eastern China has launched an annual innovation prize in science and technology which awards half a million RMB each to 60 locally-based entrepreneurs every second year.

(cont)
Building a robust innovation network

In addition to talent development programs, China has invested heavily in a network of , offering support to businesses that need to convert research output into products and services. There are now 17 national high-tech innovation parks and 146 regional ones across the country which play a growing role in upgrading the local economy. By early 2016, China had already put in place over 5,000 high-tech start-up incubators, the highest number among all nations worldwide. Manufacturing centers such as Kunshan and Suzhou are now well on their way to becoming new hubs of innovation as they use their financial resources to attract cutting-edge research center investment, such as Apple's recent decision to build a new R&D center in Suzhou.
Despite progress, problems remain

In spite of a planned commitment to achieve No.1 status and much progress along the way, China still faces many challenges in maximizing its potential in scientific research:

In terms of international recognition, although Dr. Tu Youyou became the first Chinese citizen to Nobel Prize for Science in 2015, the number of China-based Nobel Laureates remains surprisingly low when China’s sharply growing capacity in science and technology is taken into account.

While China’s number of registered patents ranks third globally, the rate of technology transfer remains relatively low, signaling a gap between academic research and its use to produce commercial results.

Even though the mainland has the largest number of scientific research publications in the world, their quality is not consistently high and the average citation rate of Chinese scholars (8.14 times per paper) still lags the global average of 11.29 times.

Researchers must also deal with rigid budget expenditure requirements that force them to spend time and energy on complex administrative and compliance processes. In addition, they are overseen by multiple government ministries as authorities hesitate to move to a pure outcome-based management model, worrying that research budgets will be misused or embezzled.

An ongoing battle

China has been moving forward in a dramatic fashion and overcoming big challenges along the way. In contrast with past efforts, China today has the money, skilled manpower and modern infrastructure to establish itself as a major player in global S&T affairs. Undoubtedly, competition remains a valuable motivator for continuing innovation worldwide, but surely it is in the best interests of the U.S. to continue engaging with the mainland in all areas of S&T in order to foster even deeper bilateral cooperation and technology transfer.


One point is crystal clear: with innovation the primary growth engine of today’s post-industrial era, any significant reduction in research spending in the U.S. is not a shortcut to making America great again.

Let’s hope that Donald Trump and other White House officials also realize that this is no time to throttle back on the resources and the attention given to supporting the country's S&T future.

solarz said:

There some things in this world that just ain't right, and lab-grown meat is one of them.

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shit this sounds like a plot from a bad science fiction/horror movie!

On the road to intelligent highway From Henri K

China inaugurated its first photovoltaic demonstration route in Jinan, Shandong province, last Friday and plans to carry out full-scale tests on its extensive motorway network by the end of this year.

Funded by Qilu Transportation Development Group, a state-owned company created in 2015 to administer some 3,409 km of highways, or 60% of the network in Shandong Province, this demonstration project builds on the technologies developed by the research team of Professor ZHANG Hong Chao (张宏 超) of Tongji University (同济大学).

Since the launch of the project in December 2016, 660 m² of photovoltaic road (100 × 6.6 meters?) Have been built on the pilot site, where all ancillary facilities such as charging stations for electric vehicles and signaling intelligent.

The objective is to be able to test not only the viability of photovoltaic paving, especially in terms of technical characteristics and safety factors compared to a normal road made of bituminous concrete, but also the applicability of all peripheral installations for the " intelligent road network "of tomorrow.

According to , this photovoltaic road prototype has already connected to the grid and is starting to produce electricity. Apart from energy production, it is able to automatically defrost the road through electrothermal conversion.







Although full-scale tests on motorways by the end of 2017 are not detailed, it would appear that Qilu Transportation Development Group intends to transform part of the emergency stop strips into a circulating photovoltaic surface.

indicates, for example, that while the 26 million square meters of emergency stop strips in the highway network in Shandong Province are all equipped with solar pavers, capacity of energy production will be 6.22 billion kWh per year. This corresponds to an economic value of 6.09 billion yuan (~ 778.61 million euros), and 6.2 million tons of CO2 emissions less.

Chinese researchers consider the road-generating network of energy as one of the technological bricks indispensable in the construction of the intelligent cities of tomorrow.

Indeed, coupled with contactless recharging technologies, solar roads not only make the democratization of electric vehicles possible, but they can also be used as a giant platform for the exchange of information between vehicles, a prerequisite for automatic steering.

Note that if such a set of technologies becomes mature and applicable on a large scale, probably in 30 years, there will also be a big impact in China's strategic geopolitics because it will be less dependent on the fossil energy it is imported from the Middle East, for example.

Like many Sino-Chinese projects which appear to be unsustainable in other countries, the economic and strategic potential of a highway network in China with a photovoltaic pavement is very high. The country now has more than 130,000 kilometers of highway in operation, the largest in the world in just 30 years, and this number continues to grow by around 3,000 each year.

Henri K.

mr.bean said:

shit this sounds like a plot from a bad science fiction/horror movie!

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The Revenge of the Zombie Meat Lab.

vesicles said:

Platelets are actually considered as contaminants in cellular work. There has been a continual debate over using either serum or plasma. Serum is the liquid part of blood after the blood is allowed to clot. Plasma is the liquid portion of the blood that has been prevented from clotting altogether. So plasma is closer to the original blood but is full of contaminants, including cells and platelets. One advantage of serum is that it is free of platelets.

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If plasma can be used, and is extracted in the same manner used on humans with the red cells etc returned to the donar, then it would be less stressful on the cows.Cows are only milked for part of the year and are usually dried off in autumn.Letting them winter in large barns is becoming common practice, especially in areas of high winter rainfall.Wet paddocks and the stock is bad news for the paddock. It is these barns in the off season they can be tapped for serum or plasma and stored in animal blood banks.
I looked up lab and artificial meat, and I think you would be quite surprised on the progress. The $3000,000 meat pattie for a hamburger a few years ago is now only $2000 and dropping. Some participaters in lab meat claim they can put out a hamburger for $12. There's firms engaged in making lab fish, chicken and even wine.to rival those expensive vintages.
Now that would get snobby wine drinkers really shooked up.

B.I.B. said:

If plasma can be used, and is extracted in the same manner used on humans with the red cells etc returned to the donar, then it would be less stressful on the cows.Cows are only milked for part of the year and are usually dried off in autumn.Letting them winter in large barns is becoming common practice, especially in areas of high winter rainfall.Wet paddocks and the stock is bad news for the paddock. It is these barns in the off season they can be tapped for serum or plasma and stored in animal blood banks.
I looked up lab and artificial meat, and I think you would be quite surprised on the progress. The $3000,000 meat pattie for a hamburger a few years ago is now only $2000 and dropping. Some participaters in lab meat claim they can put out a hamburger for $12. There's firms engaged in making lab fish, chicken and even wine.to rival those expensive vintages.
Now that would get snobby wine drinkers really shooked up.

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Interesting development indeed!

Meat pattie is easier than a whole piece of meat, like a steak. All you need to have is many small pieces of meat, which is now technically doable as I mentioned before. A large piece of intact muscle tissue would be completely different story.

A price tag of $300,000 would be close to what I would have imagined for a small piece of lab meat. I am indeed surprised that they can now make it for as little as $12. Let's see how it goes.

This is interesting article showing the reason why the US and Japanese loosing the dominance in consumer tech.
At one time Japan with their Sony, sharp, Toshiba were dominant in consumer tech. Walkman, Video tape recorder VHS,TV, Stereo But they all disappear now. Japan has not had blockbuster product since 1990. They missed the personal computer era then they missed the smart phone era

Competitive advantage not God-given – as US and Japan know
Technologist and author Henry Kressel reflects on the reasons for nations losing their industrial dominance. The story of electronics, he says, shows that innovation, driven by corporations but supported by governments, is key to competitive longevity
By JULY 12, 2017 2:13 PM (UTC+8)

Sony employee Suzuyo Suzuki displays the MD Walkman MZ-E55 (left) and a mini-disc at the company's headquaters in Tokyo, on September 7, 1998. Photo: AFP / Toru Yamanaka
I spent the first 20 years of my career in the research and development laboratories of the RCA Corporation, then one of the leading electronics companies in the world and led, for many years, by a great visionary in David Sarnoff.

In addition to developing color television, RCA Laboratories’ inventions included flat panel displays, lasers of all kinds, solid state imaging devices, CMOS chip technology and communications systems including microwave and optical systems. These innovations helped build industries with close to a trillion dollars of current annual revenues that are the foundations of the digital world.

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But few of these electronic infrastructure products are now made in the United States and in none has the US maintained world leadership. For example, the flat panel industry that serves practically all electronic products yields over US$100 billion of annual revenues – from factories in Asia. And 73% of all color television sets are now produced in China. In chips, two world leaders are now in Taiwan and South Korea, respectively, with China rapidly developing its own industry.

There is a sobering lesson here: Industrial competitive advantage is a fragile thing. The US used to lead these industries because they were invented in the US, supported by major corporate resources focused on innovation and also indirectly supported through Federal research and development funding of universities and major corporate laboratories.

In an ideal world, each country leverages its competitive advantage by producing and exporting what it competes best at, in terms of cost and quality, in an open interchange of goods and services. In this ideal world, consumers benefit and businesses can prosper because they operate on a large world market. But this is all happy classroom theory. We are not living in an ideal world of free trade because country leaders game the system through industrial subsidies and legal restrictions that bolster favored industries by limiting competitive imports and promoting their own exports.

Sure, some competitive advantages are based on geography and result in low-cost agricultural or mineral products. But when it comes to electronic products, competitive advantage is totally man-made.

At RCA, the first serious challenge to its leadership was from Japanese electronics companies that began, in the 1970s, a focused campaign to capture the consumer electronics market – then primarily color television receivers. The technology was licensed from RCA, which had a policy of open licensing. Japan had no competitive advantage on entering consumer electronics — except government support, which included blocking television imports and hence kept domestic prices much higher than in the US. In the 1970s, a Japanese television set sold for US$300 in the US and the equivalent of US$500 in Tokyo. In effect, Japanese consumers, by paying high prices, were subsidizing products exported to capture the world market and in particular the US, where no restrictions were placed on imports and distribution channels were readily available.


South Korea, home to Samsung, now has 40% of the world market in memory chips. Photo: Reuters /Jo Yong-Hak
The Japanese planners’ next target was semiconductor memory chips. Japanese imports hit the US market, with lower prices putting profitability pressure on companies such as Texas Instruments that had invested heavily in manufacturing facilities. The important point is that these imported products were of high quality but lower price – and they did displace US-made products rapidly, creating loss-making domestic plants.

Industrialists were used to seeing low-cost but lower-quality Asian imports. This new competition from quality but cheaper products was of a new kind and much more dangerous.

Competing with such targeted Japanese imports was considered a losing game by most affected business leaders, who did not think that investing heavily in innovation was a long-term answer to remaining competitive. They saw a choice — either exit the markets targeted by Asian entrants or find a lower-cost manufacturing location to compete on price. They believed that lower cost was the answer because US government subsidy or legal protection were not available – as proved by the Zenith Corporation, one of America’s leading television receiver manufacturers, which spent years fighting Japanese importers in the courts on the basis of dumping and ended up losing and being acquired by a South Korean company for its brand name.

RCA’s answer was to reduce production costs by moving its television receiver manufacturing to Mexico and closing its Indianapolis factory. The important result was that the company’s senior business management lost its appetite for consumer electronics investment. When the issue of investing in flat panel displays based on RCA Laboratory inventions came up, the decision was made not to do so and the technology was licensed to the Sharp Corporation in Japan, who invested billions in the liquid crystal manufacturing technology.

The Japanese leadership in memory chips and consumer electronics is gone and no Japanese companies even factor in the smartphone business, the biggest current consumer electronics business. Why?

The Japanese strategy to build its industry followed a script. So what was the Japanese competitive advantage in targeting the consumer electronics business in the 1970s? First, an organized national effort with selected corporations supported by the government and a limit on imports. Second, the availability of capital to finance new plants. And third, a focus on mass production of quality products using then-superior production techniques based on an understanding that international product acceptance was going to depend on a combination of superior quality and low price.

But wait. This is not the end of the story.

This competitive advantage was fleeting and leadership in consumer electronics now lies elsewhere. The Japanese leadership in memory chips and consumer electronics is gone and no Japanese companies even factor in the smartphone business, the biggest current consumer electronics business. Why?

There is a great deal of debate regarding the causes of stalled growth in the Japanese economy. In terms of the electronic businesses that I am familiar with, I would place the major blame on the lagging ability of big Japanese companies to truly innovate. With a domestic market largely shielded from competition, any imperative for product innovation by the big companies favored by government planners was lacking. As a result, investment lagged in radically new products and related technologies. For example, leadership in memory chips moved to Samsung in South Korea (which now has 40% of the world market). Leadership in flat panels also moved to Samsung, with the latest technology, OLEDs, being produced there. Sharp, the early leader in the sector, is not only out of the business but was acquired by a Taiwanese company. Sic transit Gloria mundi.

Governments play a key role in building innovative industries by supporting infrastructure and capital investment as well as funding research and development, but competitive advantageinelectronics is not bestowed as a gift by governments or the gods but by business leaders managing innovation and investing capital and human resources in a timely way. The US gave up its leadership because of strategic decisions by many corporate leaders; then it was the turn of the Japanese. Who is next?

Well the question should be who is the king of hill of consumer tech now

now I read
China to be world's top display screen producer by 2019

Updated 2017-10-07 19:19 GMT+8

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From as early as 2019, China will become the world's largest production base for display screens, according to the latest statistics from the China Video Industry Association (CVIA) and the China Optics and Optoelectronics Manufacturers Association (COEMA).

The CVIA and COEMA said that, so far, investment in assembly lines for producing display screens that are either planned or under construction has reached 800 billion yuan (around 120 billion US dollars) in China. LCD panels alone have received more than 500 billion yuan (around 75 billion US dollars).

China's display manufacturing has gained steam, leading to booming production and rising corporate profits. At the same time, domestic brands have also broken the dominance of imported high-end OLED panels.

According to Yi Xianjing, research and development leader of Beijing-based market research company All View Cloud, China is expected to overtake South Korea and have the largest production capacity in the world.

"The shipments of displays in China will continue to improve, especially when more production lines have been put into operation in the fourth quarter," said Yi.

In the first half of this year, China's display shipments made up a third of all shipments worldwide, which is second only to South Korea.

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Jura said:

now I read
China to be world's top display screen producer by 2019

Updated 2017-10-07 19:19 GMT+8

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I have no doubt that China will produce the most of display screen in 2019 ... but South Korea will still dominating in the high-end market, at least for sometime after 2019

China is still lagging (by wide margin) of high-end chips manufacturing capability ... at the moment the best China has is 28nm technology by SMIC ..... two generations behind

But SMIC will have 14nm tech in 2020,in cooperation with Huawei .. basically skipping 22nm tech


and it seems now 14nm will be ready in 2018