News on China's scientific and technological development.
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bladerunner
Banned Idiot
Re: Chinese patents rise 56%
AS regards patent filings , nanotechnology patent filings have becomethe second largest in the world in China in 2009, but according to Bai Chunli, acting vice president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), warned that despite the progress made," China still faces several problems in developing nanotechnology, including insufficient understanding of the industrial need for the technology. "
Is he suggesting that the researchers are out of touch for the needs of the industry, or is China's industry failing to recognize the value of the nano patents.
AS regards patent filings , nanotechnology patent filings have becomethe second largest in the world in China in 2009, but according to Bai Chunli, acting vice president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), warned that despite the progress made," China still faces several problems in developing nanotechnology, including insufficient understanding of the industrial need for the technology. "
Is he suggesting that the researchers are out of touch for the needs of the industry, or is China's industry failing to recognize the value of the nano patents.
Beginning with a reference to an article on the Wired website that said China has decided to introduce molten salt nuclear reactors I have read somethings about such reactors. Wikipedia told me that that such reactors generally burn U233 and breed slightly more in a mantel of Thorium fluoride. The reprocessing is done on site. The operating temperature is higher, so the thermal efficiency is much higher than with conventional light water reactors. The whole is much smaller than equivalent LWRs and the size of efficient reactors runs from several MW to several GW.
I also read, a short while ago, I think in China-Defense-Mash-up, that China had completed the development of a nuclear fuel processing process. The article showed amazement because such systems must have been developed before the production of the first Pu bomb, but I now understand it was for this type of nuclear reactor.
These reactors promise to be much cheaper and lighter than LWRs ( it was first conceived for nuclear powered bombers in the 1950's in the US ), so might well find employ not only in small towns in the interior and producing liquid fuel from carbon dioxide when all power is not necessary for electricity production ( replacing not only coal for electric power production, but also imported liquid fuel ), but it might also be used to power ships, and not just aircraft carriers but also the attendant destroyers and frigates as well as large merchant vessels.
With the fuel processing developed it will likely take only a few years to build prototype reactors and perhaps ten years till the reactors go into serial production.
I also read, a short while ago, I think in China-Defense-Mash-up, that China had completed the development of a nuclear fuel processing process. The article showed amazement because such systems must have been developed before the production of the first Pu bomb, but I now understand it was for this type of nuclear reactor.
These reactors promise to be much cheaper and lighter than LWRs ( it was first conceived for nuclear powered bombers in the 1950's in the US ), so might well find employ not only in small towns in the interior and producing liquid fuel from carbon dioxide when all power is not necessary for electricity production ( replacing not only coal for electric power production, but also imported liquid fuel ), but it might also be used to power ships, and not just aircraft carriers but also the attendant destroyers and frigates as well as large merchant vessels.
With the fuel processing developed it will likely take only a few years to build prototype reactors and perhaps ten years till the reactors go into serial production.
AssassinsMace
Lieutenant General
I believe this video is actually produced by GM China and supposedly displayed at the Expo.
[video=youtube;wkzNSospSoM]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkzNSospSoM&feature=player_embedded[/video]
[video=youtube;wkzNSospSoM]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkzNSospSoM&feature=player_embedded[/video]
Martian
Senior Member
Taiwan develops world’s first enterovirus 71 vaccine
Enterovirus pathogenesis
"Taiwan develops world’s first enterovirus 71 vaccine
Publication Date：01/11/2011
Source： Taiwan Today
By Audrey Wang
Taiwan’s state-backed Adimmune Corp. announced Jan. 10 it has developed the world’s first vaccine against the potentially fatal enterovirus 71, and plans to put the product on the market in five years.
“Our research team has made a breakthrough in the large-scale cell culture technology for mass producing the vaccine,” Adimmune Chairman Steve Chan said. “The first phase of clinical trials is set to begin in 2012.”
Taiwan started developing enterovirus vaccines following the EV71 outbreak in 1998 that claimed the lives of 78 young children. Another massive occurrence of the virus took place in 2001, when the disease led to the deaths of 58 children. The virus causes severe neurological disorders and commonly infects infants and children younger than 5 years old.
In related news, Chan said Adimmune’s continued innovation in developing advanced biotechnology has been recognized with a Good Manufacturing Practice certificate from the European Union. It is the only vaccine manufacturer in Asia to receive this qualification, he added.
Chan disclosed that the corporation will invest NT$1.5 billion (US$50.36 million) in building the largest vaccine plant in Asia to expand its output tenfold. “This investment should lift the company’s annual production capacity to 30 million doses,” he said. (THN)
Write to Audrey Wang at [email protected]"
Enterovirus pathogenesis
"Taiwan develops world’s first enterovirus 71 vaccine
Publication Date：01/11/2011
Source： Taiwan Today
By Audrey Wang
Taiwan’s state-backed Adimmune Corp. announced Jan. 10 it has developed the world’s first vaccine against the potentially fatal enterovirus 71, and plans to put the product on the market in five years.
“Our research team has made a breakthrough in the large-scale cell culture technology for mass producing the vaccine,” Adimmune Chairman Steve Chan said. “The first phase of clinical trials is set to begin in 2012.”
Taiwan started developing enterovirus vaccines following the EV71 outbreak in 1998 that claimed the lives of 78 young children. Another massive occurrence of the virus took place in 2001, when the disease led to the deaths of 58 children. The virus causes severe neurological disorders and commonly infects infants and children younger than 5 years old.
In related news, Chan said Adimmune’s continued innovation in developing advanced biotechnology has been recognized with a Good Manufacturing Practice certificate from the European Union. It is the only vaccine manufacturer in Asia to receive this qualification, he added.
Chan disclosed that the corporation will invest NT$1.5 billion (US$50.36 million) in building the largest vaccine plant in Asia to expand its output tenfold. “This investment should lift the company’s annual production capacity to 30 million doses,” he said. (THN)
Write to Audrey Wang at [email protected]"
Martian
Senior Member
High NOON For Microwave Photons
(l-r) Haohua Wang and Matteo Mariantoni. (Image: George Foulsham, Office of Public Affairs, UCSB)
Image of chip containing the superconducting integrated circuit used to generate NOON microwave states. (Image: Erik Lucero, UCSB)
"High NOON For Microwave Photons
by Staff Writers
Santa Barbara CA (SPX) Feb 18, 2011
An important milestone toward the realization of a large-scale quantum computer, and further demonstration of a new level of the quantum control of light, were accomplished by a team of scientists at UC Santa Barbara and in China and Japan.
The study, published in the Feb. 7 issue of the journal Physical Review Letters, involved scientists from Zhejiang University, China, and NEC Corporation, Japan. The experimental effort was pursued in the research groups of UCSB physics professors Andrew Cleland and John Martinis.
The team described how they used a superconducting quantum integrated circuit to generate unique quantum states of light known as "NOON" states. These states, generated from microwave frequency photons, the quantum unit of light, were created and stored in two physically-separated microwave storage cavities, explained first author Haohua Wang, postdoctoral fellow in physics at UCSB.
The quantum NOON states were created using one, two, or three photons, with all the photons in one cavity, leaving the other cavity empty. This was simultaneous with the first cavity being empty, with all the photons stored in the second cavity.
"This seemingly impossible situation, allowed by quantum mechanics, led to interesting results when we looked inside the cavities," said second author Matteo Mariantoni, postdoctoral fellow in physics at UCSB.
"There was a 50 percent chance of seeing all the photons in one cavity, and a 50 percent chance of not finding any - in which case all the photons could always be found in the other cavity."
However, if one of the cavities was gently probed before looking inside, thus changing the quantum state, the effect of the probing could be seen, even if that cavity was subsequently found to be empty, he added.
"It's kind of like the states are ghostly twins or triplets," said Wang. "They are always together, but somehow you never know where they are. They also have a mysterious way of communicating, so they always seem to know what is going to happen."
Indeed, these types of states display what Einstein famously termed, "spooky action at a distance," where prodding or measuring a quantum state in one location affects its behavior elsewhere.
The quantum integrated circuit, which includes superconducting quantum bits in addition to the microwave storage cavities, forms part of what eventually may become a quantum computational architecture."
(l-r) Haohua Wang and Matteo Mariantoni. (Image: George Foulsham, Office of Public Affairs, UCSB)
Image of chip containing the superconducting integrated circuit used to generate NOON microwave states. (Image: Erik Lucero, UCSB)
"High NOON For Microwave Photons
by Staff Writers
Santa Barbara CA (SPX) Feb 18, 2011
An important milestone toward the realization of a large-scale quantum computer, and further demonstration of a new level of the quantum control of light, were accomplished by a team of scientists at UC Santa Barbara and in China and Japan.
The study, published in the Feb. 7 issue of the journal Physical Review Letters, involved scientists from Zhejiang University, China, and NEC Corporation, Japan. The experimental effort was pursued in the research groups of UCSB physics professors Andrew Cleland and John Martinis.
The team described how they used a superconducting quantum integrated circuit to generate unique quantum states of light known as "NOON" states. These states, generated from microwave frequency photons, the quantum unit of light, were created and stored in two physically-separated microwave storage cavities, explained first author Haohua Wang, postdoctoral fellow in physics at UCSB.
The quantum NOON states were created using one, two, or three photons, with all the photons in one cavity, leaving the other cavity empty. This was simultaneous with the first cavity being empty, with all the photons stored in the second cavity.
"This seemingly impossible situation, allowed by quantum mechanics, led to interesting results when we looked inside the cavities," said second author Matteo Mariantoni, postdoctoral fellow in physics at UCSB.
"There was a 50 percent chance of seeing all the photons in one cavity, and a 50 percent chance of not finding any - in which case all the photons could always be found in the other cavity."
However, if one of the cavities was gently probed before looking inside, thus changing the quantum state, the effect of the probing could be seen, even if that cavity was subsequently found to be empty, he added.
"It's kind of like the states are ghostly twins or triplets," said Wang. "They are always together, but somehow you never know where they are. They also have a mysterious way of communicating, so they always seem to know what is going to happen."
Indeed, these types of states display what Einstein famously termed, "spooky action at a distance," where prodding or measuring a quantum state in one location affects its behavior elsewhere.
The quantum integrated circuit, which includes superconducting quantum bits in addition to the microwave storage cavities, forms part of what eventually may become a quantum computational architecture."
Is it just me, or does this 2030 shanghai remind you of the city in Minority report? From the holograms to the envisaged motorway system?
Martian
Senior Member
Absorbing physics reverses laser
"Absorbing physics reverses laser
By David Meyer (@superglaze), ZDNet UK, 18 February, 2011 14:45
Physicists at Yale University have created the first functioning reverse laser, suggesting that the technology could be used in next-generation optical communications and computing.
In a paper entitled (PDF), Wenjie Wan, Yidong Chong, Li Ge, Heeso Noh, A Douglas Stone, and Hui Cao describe the device, dubbed a coherent perfect absorber (CPA), as producing the "time-reversed counterpart to laser emission". The researchers said in the paper — published in the journal Science on Friday — that the device could have potential practical applications in integrated optics.
The researchers' CPA is a silicon slice, around 110μm thick, which completely absorbs photons in a coherent stream — this is the precise reverse of what lasers do, which is to produce coherent beams of photons. The team shone a tunable infrared laser into the silicon from both sides, and with the right tuning the silicon absorbed all the photons and turned them into heat.
"The properties of CPAs point to a new method for controlling absorption through coherent illumination," the team wrote, adding that this means it can be used to control and measure the wavelengths of light. The CPA works through a consequence of the underlying symmetry in quantum physics: a process that occurs over time can be reversed as if time itself was reversed, by changing the direction of momentum and the polarity of fields within the constituents of that process.
As the team points out, the CPA relies on very specific tuning — it can perfectly absorb incoming laser beams, but only when those beams have the right relative phase and amplitude. Its nature means it could be used as a modulator, laser detector or phase-controlled optical switch.
"Coherent perfect absorbers may enable novel functionalities in silicon-integrated photonic circuits of the type envisioned for next-generation optical communications and computing applications as well as for coherent laser spectroscopy," the team wrote."
"Absorbing physics reverses laser
By David Meyer (@superglaze), ZDNet UK, 18 February, 2011 14:45
Physicists at Yale University have created the first functioning reverse laser, suggesting that the technology could be used in next-generation optical communications and computing.
In a paper entitled (PDF), Wenjie Wan, Yidong Chong, Li Ge, Heeso Noh, A Douglas Stone, and Hui Cao describe the device, dubbed a coherent perfect absorber (CPA), as producing the "time-reversed counterpart to laser emission". The researchers said in the paper — published in the journal Science on Friday — that the device could have potential practical applications in integrated optics.
The researchers' CPA is a silicon slice, around 110μm thick, which completely absorbs photons in a coherent stream — this is the precise reverse of what lasers do, which is to produce coherent beams of photons. The team shone a tunable infrared laser into the silicon from both sides, and with the right tuning the silicon absorbed all the photons and turned them into heat.
"The properties of CPAs point to a new method for controlling absorption through coherent illumination," the team wrote, adding that this means it can be used to control and measure the wavelengths of light. The CPA works through a consequence of the underlying symmetry in quantum physics: a process that occurs over time can be reversed as if time itself was reversed, by changing the direction of momentum and the polarity of fields within the constituents of that process.
As the team points out, the CPA relies on very specific tuning — it can perfectly absorb incoming laser beams, but only when those beams have the right relative phase and amplitude. Its nature means it could be used as a modulator, laser detector or phase-controlled optical switch.
"Coherent perfect absorbers may enable novel functionalities in silicon-integrated photonic circuits of the type envisioned for next-generation optical communications and computing applications as well as for coherent laser spectroscopy," the team wrote."
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Martian
Senior Member
Plant or animal? Odd fossils defy classification
"Plant or animal? Odd fossils defy classification
Discovery in China may shed light on evolution of big, complex organisms
By Wynne Parry
LiveScience
updated 2/16/2011 6:29:38 PM ET
Strange fossils, including some that could be predecessors to modern animals, found in China shed new light on the evolution of large, complex organisms, and indicate that they may have diversified earlier than thought.
One of the approximately 600-million-year-old fossils unearthed in China, this organism was probably seaweed. It has a root-like holdfast to secure it to the sea floor, a conical stem and a crown of ribbon-like structures. (Photo credit: Zhe Chen)
Researchers believe that the rocks containing these fossils, found in southern Anhui Province, date between 635 million and 580 million years ago. The new types of organisms discovered in them include two that are fan-shaped, as long as 2 inches, and resemble seaweed, as well as three other new types of organisms that are difficult to classify as animal or plant.
"Some of my colleagues are more leaning toward the animal interpretation," said study researcher Shuhai Xiao, a professor of geobiology at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. "But my personal view is that we still don't know what they are."
One of the three could be interpreted as resembling the early life stage of a polyp, or a sea anemone. The other two mysterious organisms have tube-like structures that could represent the digestive system of worm-like animals. For one of these, the call for plant or animal depends on perspective.
You could interpret the bulbous structure at one end of its stalk as a holdfast, which seaweed use as an anchor, making the organism a plant. Or you could see a proboscis, a tube-like feeding structure, and a simple, worm-like animal, the authors write in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.
Life grows bigger
These fossils were discovered in the black shale of what is called the Lantian Formation in China, and they date back to the first part of the Ediacaran Period, the time when life became big, or at least visible to the naked eye.
"Animals in the Ediacaran Period are almost universally bizarre, and it is very difficult to place them in any modern animal phyla," Xiao told LiveScience. "They may be precursors to modern animals or offshoots of modern animals that don’t have any direct descendants."
Until now, scientists had thought the oldest collection of fossils of large, complex life forms was the Avalon assemblage, dating back to about 579 million to 565 million years ago. It contained equally strange and unclassifiable organisms called rangeomorphs.
Because the Lantian fossils are older and contain complex, but very different, organisms from those in the Avalon formation, the researchers write that large, complex organisms may have diversified earlier than thought.
A habitable ocean
The fossils described by Xiao and his colleagues, including lead author Xunlai Yuan of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, were preserved at a critical time in Earth's history, arriving after the end of “a snowball Earth event,” when global temperatures dropped and ice extended into the tropics. Meanwhile, the explosion of animal diversity that came with the Cambrian Period was still a few tens of millions of years away.
During the Ediacaran Period, the oceans were in transition as oxygen spread into their depths. However, the discovery of these fossils makes the oxygen story more complex than a simple, permanent switch from oxygen-free to oxygen-rich oceans, according to Xiao.
A geochemical analysis of the rocks indicates the fossils were deposited in an environment without oxygen. However, large, complex organisms like these would have needed oxygen to survive, creating a contradiction.
The researchers think the ocean may have fluctuated between an oxygenated and an oxygen-free state during this transition. When waters became oxygenated, the organisms colonized them, but the frequent oxygen-free conditions would have wiped them out, Xiao explained. The geochemical data available are not sensitive enough to detect brief fluctuations, he said."
"Plant or animal? Odd fossils defy classification
Discovery in China may shed light on evolution of big, complex organisms
By Wynne Parry
LiveScience
updated 2/16/2011 6:29:38 PM ET
Strange fossils, including some that could be predecessors to modern animals, found in China shed new light on the evolution of large, complex organisms, and indicate that they may have diversified earlier than thought.
One of the approximately 600-million-year-old fossils unearthed in China, this organism was probably seaweed. It has a root-like holdfast to secure it to the sea floor, a conical stem and a crown of ribbon-like structures. (Photo credit: Zhe Chen)
Researchers believe that the rocks containing these fossils, found in southern Anhui Province, date between 635 million and 580 million years ago. The new types of organisms discovered in them include two that are fan-shaped, as long as 2 inches, and resemble seaweed, as well as three other new types of organisms that are difficult to classify as animal or plant.
"Some of my colleagues are more leaning toward the animal interpretation," said study researcher Shuhai Xiao, a professor of geobiology at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. "But my personal view is that we still don't know what they are."
One of the three could be interpreted as resembling the early life stage of a polyp, or a sea anemone. The other two mysterious organisms have tube-like structures that could represent the digestive system of worm-like animals. For one of these, the call for plant or animal depends on perspective.
You could interpret the bulbous structure at one end of its stalk as a holdfast, which seaweed use as an anchor, making the organism a plant. Or you could see a proboscis, a tube-like feeding structure, and a simple, worm-like animal, the authors write in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.
Life grows bigger
These fossils were discovered in the black shale of what is called the Lantian Formation in China, and they date back to the first part of the Ediacaran Period, the time when life became big, or at least visible to the naked eye.
"Animals in the Ediacaran Period are almost universally bizarre, and it is very difficult to place them in any modern animal phyla," Xiao told LiveScience. "They may be precursors to modern animals or offshoots of modern animals that don’t have any direct descendants."
Until now, scientists had thought the oldest collection of fossils of large, complex life forms was the Avalon assemblage, dating back to about 579 million to 565 million years ago. It contained equally strange and unclassifiable organisms called rangeomorphs.
Because the Lantian fossils are older and contain complex, but very different, organisms from those in the Avalon formation, the researchers write that large, complex organisms may have diversified earlier than thought.
A habitable ocean
The fossils described by Xiao and his colleagues, including lead author Xunlai Yuan of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, were preserved at a critical time in Earth's history, arriving after the end of “a snowball Earth event,” when global temperatures dropped and ice extended into the tropics. Meanwhile, the explosion of animal diversity that came with the Cambrian Period was still a few tens of millions of years away.
During the Ediacaran Period, the oceans were in transition as oxygen spread into their depths. However, the discovery of these fossils makes the oxygen story more complex than a simple, permanent switch from oxygen-free to oxygen-rich oceans, according to Xiao.
A geochemical analysis of the rocks indicates the fossils were deposited in an environment without oxygen. However, large, complex organisms like these would have needed oxygen to survive, creating a contradiction.
The researchers think the ocean may have fluctuated between an oxygenated and an oxygen-free state during this transition. When waters became oxygenated, the organisms colonized them, but the frequent oxygen-free conditions would have wiped them out, Xiao explained. The geochemical data available are not sensitive enough to detect brief fluctuations, he said."
Martian
Senior Member
Panda costumes help researchers reintroduce pandas to the wild
Panda costumes help researchers reintroduce pandas to the wild
Feb 3 2011 10:16am, EST
Mish Whalen writes: Wildlife researchers in China's Sichuan province have been putting on panda costumes to prevent captive-born pandas from identifying with humans when trying to reintroduce captive-bred Giant Pandas back into the wild. See a
but I just had to post more. The expression on the panda's face, in the first photo, is priceless.
Feeders dressed as giant pandas give a physical examination to a giant panda at the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda on February 3, 2011 in Wolong Nature Reserve, Aba Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture of Sichuan Province, China. (Photo credit: China Photos / Getty Images)
Feeders dressed as giant pandas give a physical examination to a giant panda at the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda on Feb. 3, 2011 in Wolong Nature Reserve. (Photo credit: China Photos / Getty Images Contributor)
Feeders dressed as giant pandas prepare to give a physical examination for a giant panda. (Photo credit: China Photos / Getty Images Contributor)
Panda costumes help researchers reintroduce pandas to the wild
Feb 3 2011 10:16am, EST
Mish Whalen writes: Wildlife researchers in China's Sichuan province have been putting on panda costumes to prevent captive-born pandas from identifying with humans when trying to reintroduce captive-bred Giant Pandas back into the wild. See a
but I just had to post more. The expression on the panda's face, in the first photo, is priceless.
Feeders dressed as giant pandas give a physical examination to a giant panda at the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda on February 3, 2011 in Wolong Nature Reserve, Aba Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture of Sichuan Province, China. (Photo credit: China Photos / Getty Images)
Feeders dressed as giant pandas give a physical examination to a giant panda at the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda on Feb. 3, 2011 in Wolong Nature Reserve. (Photo credit: China Photos / Getty Images Contributor)
Feeders dressed as giant pandas prepare to give a physical examination for a giant panda. (Photo credit: China Photos / Getty Images Contributor)