News on China's scientific and technological development.

"New heat-regulating building material could cut building heating and cooling costs
By Darren Quick
22:44 August 2, 2011


A new heat-regulating material could be used in buildings to cut heating and cooling costs

Researchers at the Ningpo, China campus of the University of Nottingham (UNNC) have created a new heat-regulating material that could be used to cut the heating and cooling costs of buildings. The non-deformed storage phase change material (PCM) can be fixed so that it starts absorbing any excess heat above a pre-determined temperature and releasing stored heat when the ambient temperature drops below the set point. The researchers say the material can be manufactured in a variety of shapes and sizes, even small enough so that it can be sprayed as a microscopic film to surfaces in existing buildings.

The researchers at UNNC's Centre for Sustainable Energy Technologies say the novel material possesses a larger energy storage capacity with faster thermal response than existing materials and could be cheaply manufactured. The basic structure of the material has to be engineered for a specific temperature before it is used and the research team, led by Professor Jo Darkwa, who is Director of the Centre for Sustainable Energy Technologies, is now looking at creating material that can be used for both heating and cooling applications.

"The material won't make air-conditioners obsolete, because you still need an air conditioner to control humidity and air movement. This material purely reduces the amount of excessive heat energy in a room," said Professor Darkwa.


Professor Jo Darkwa, Research Associate Oliver Su and PhD student Tony Zhou with their heat-regulating material

The material created in the lab looks like a circular tablet with the circumference of a large coin, but can be manufactured in various shapes and sizes so it can be applied anywhere, from walls and roofs to wallpaper, the researchers say. They believe it has the potential to save up to 35 percent of energy in a building and could also be used to enhance the efficiency of solar panels and LED lighting.

The scientists have already been awarded a patent application approval in China for the novel material, with applications in the pipeline in other countries. The UNNC is looking to develop the material further and commercialize it.

"The construction industry produces more carbon emissions than any other industry in the world -- even more than aviation. In China, the building sector is one of the highest energy consuming sectors, accounting for about 30 per cent of total energy usage and also a significant proportion of pollutant emissions. This material, if widely used, could make a major impact in the world's efforts to reduce carbon emission," said Professor Darkwa."

Asymmetry Advances Photonic Processors, Says Study In Science With UCSD, Caltech, Chinese Researchers



A research team including UC San Diego scientists say they've made significant progress toward improving light-based "photonic" microprocessors so they can handle information far more efficiently than electronic chips.

The researchers say they've solved the problem of interference from light reflecting backward on the chip. Their solution was to design a circuit that handles light differently depending on which direction it's traveling. Forward, the light travels in a symmetrical path. Backward, the light is scattered asymetrically, dissipating so it doesn't cause interference.

The feat "is expected to have strong impacts in both fundamental physics and device applications," the paper stated. The solution is similar to that used in electronics for diodes, according to a press release from UC San Diego.

A paper detailing their research, "Nonreciprocal Light Propagation in a Silicon Photonic Circuit," was published today by the journal Science. Its lead researcher is Liang Feng, an electrical engineering postdoc at Caltech, who earned his doctorate at UCSD last year. Others who took part are UCSD's Maurice Ayache and Yeshaiahu Fainman; and Jingqing Huang, Ye-Long Xu, Ming-Hui Lu, Yan-Feng Chen of Nanjing University in China; and Axel Scherer, also of Caltech.

Photonic chips have several advantages over electronic chips, such as greater potential speed. Photons don't interact with each other as strongly as electrons do, making them more efficient. Like electronic chips, photonic chips can be made with silicon, an abundant element, although their high loss of light presents challenges.

Progress toward making photonic circuits goes back nearly two decades. In 2002, when University of Toronto researchers discovered a way to reliably make photonic crystals of specified characteristics.

In 1997, Northwestern University researchers figured out how to make a nanoscale photonic resonator, allowing tiny lasers to be used in photonic chips.

Major win for China's LDK.



LDK Solar to Supply Modules for McGraw-Hill's Groundbreaking Solar Farm
Submitted by eBoom Staff on August 3, 2011

Chinese photovoltaic solar manufacturer, LDK Solar, Ltd. has been selected to supply the modules for largest privately-owned solar power project in the Western Hemisphere.

The solar farm, being constructed by the world's largest international publisher, McGraw-Hill, is located in East Windsor, New Jersey. NJR Clean Energy Ventures, a subsidiary of the the power company New Jersey Resources, will invest $60 million to develop and install the system.

Advanced Solar Products has been awarded the contract to construct the groundbreaking facility. The company will take 58,803 LDK solar modules and place them on their patented Solstice Mounting System. Construction on the 14.1 MW project began in July. LDK will deliver the solar modules by November 2011, and construction is expected to be complete by the spring of 2012.

The solar farm is expected to reduce emissions at McGraw-Hill's offices in East Windsor by 10%. Meanwhile, New Jersey Resources (NJR) expects to receive a return on its investment through tax credits and the sale of Solar Renewable Energy Certificates to utilities trying to meet state renewable power requirements.

The investment in the McGraw-Hill solar farm continues to diversify NJR's energy portfolio. The company's primary business since its inception in the 1940s has been natural gas. For the last 15 years, NJR has tried to expand its energy offerings in an effort to solidify its business. Last year, NJR generated $101.8 million in revenue [pdf].

LDK Solar is the world's largest manufacturer of solar wafers used by crystalline solar panels. The company represents a number of growing Chinese firms that have propelled the nation to become the world hub for solar manufacturing. ....................................

"Scientists Invent Electricity-Free e-Paper
by Mary Mazzoni
Published on August 8th, 2011


Photo: ITRI

The (ITRI) in Taiwan has developed a reusable e-paper technology that could change the printing industry.

Unlike e-book and tablet technologies already on the market, this new e-paper doesn’t require back-lighting. So, it doesn’t use any electricity.

The rewritable paper, called “i2R e-paper,” only requires heat to transfer images onto a flexible liquid crystal panel.

The high-resolution panels also have memory function. So, signs can be programmed to change their display images at pre-set time intervals.

These e-paper displays use a fraction of the energy of flat-screen TV displays, and represent far less waste than frequently changing paper signs.

Images can be easily erased from the paper by inserting it into a thermal writing device similar to what is now used in fax machines.

The paper can be thermally reprinted up to 260 times, and researchers hope to increase that number to 500 times over the next year or two.

ITRI expects the technology to be used mostly for frequently-changing signs in stores and other public places. But they’ve also been testing it out in some other interesting applications.

Researchers demonstrated e-wallpaper, an e-paper clock that electronically refreshed each second and e-tickets that can be recycled and reprinted for multiple events.

IRTI is working with nine Taiwanese companies to commercialize the technology, and researchers hope the product will hit the open market within the next two years."

[video=youtube;XKxMXyPiSws]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKxMXyPiSws&feature=related[/video]

"Scientists develop robot that walks on water
By Chris Jablonski | July 27, 2011, 11:13am PDT

Summary: Chinese scientists report that they’ve developed an aquatic microrobot that mimics the water-walking abilities of water striders.

Walking on water is a way of life for some aquatic insects such as water striders. The tiny hairs on their long legs provide both a hydrophobic (water-repellent) surface as well as a large surface area to spread their weight across as they scoot over ponds, lakes and other waterways at mind-boggling speeds.

This remarkable ability has now been replicated in machine insects. Chinese scientists report that they’ve developed an aquatic microrobot that mimics the water-walking abilities of water striders.


Credit: American Chemical Society

The robot insect is faster, more agile and cheaper to fabricate compared to previous designs, making it a prime candidate for military spy missions, water pollution/supply monitoring, and other applications, the scientists say.

The robot has a body about the size of a quarter and is outfitted with ten superhydrophobic wire legs, and two movable, oar-like legs that are propelled by two miniature DC motors.

According to a study appearing in the journal, ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, “The microrobot could not only stand effortlessly but also walk and turn freely on the water surface, exhibiting an interesting motion characteristic.” View the video (.avi).

“Because the weight of the microrobot is equal to that of about 390 water striders, one might expect that it will sink quickly when placed on the water surface,” the report noted. Instead, the mechanical creature stands effortlessly on water surfaces and also walks and turns freely.

The study was funded by the Harbin Institute of Technology and Natural Science Foundation of China.

(Source: ACS News)"

[Note: Thank you to Marchpole for the newslink. Thank you to BladeRunner for posting a similar article earlier, but you forgot to include a cool picture of the robotic water strider.]

China's Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) fusion reactor


The Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) fusion reactor, which replicates the energy generating process of the sun, was tested at the Institute of Plasma Physics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in Hefei, capital of east China's Anhui Province in February 2006. (Source: )



"Fusion diagnostic developed at PPPL sheds light on plasma behavior at EAST
by Staff Writers
Princeton NJ (SPX) Aug 08, 2011

An instrument developed by researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) has enabled a research team at a fusion energy experiment in China to observe--in startling detail--how a particular type of electromagnetic wave known as a radiofrequency (RF) wave affects the behavior of hot ionized gas.

In the experiment at EAST (the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak located at the Institute of Plasma Physics in Hefei, China), scientists employed a high-resolution, X-ray imaging crystal spectrometer (XICS) to observe how an RF wave changed the way a hot ionized gas known as a plasma moved in a vacuum vessel. Radiofrequency waves are similar to microwaves and are used to heat and drive current in plasma.

The experimenters already knew that the RF wave, also called a lower-hybrid wave, drives current in the plasma. What they found was that the lower-hybrid wave also caused the plasma to flow as a whole and at high velocities through the vacuum vessel, a property they refer to as toroidal rotation. The spectrometer provided a two-dimensional look at the plasma, recording data at a rate of about 50 frames a second.

That's important because not all parts of the plasma move uniformly. For example, if the inner part of the plasma near the vessel's core is moving at a different rate - or even in a different direction - than the rest of the gas, researchers want to know those details. Understanding the plasma flows is vital because it could lead to better approaches to confinement.

The results were published in the June 6 edition of Physical Review Letters by researchers from the EAST team and PPPL's Manfred Bitter and Kenneth Hill. Bitter and Hill are experimentalists who have collaborated for more than 35 years.

"With plasmas, you are dealing with very high temperatures and flow velocities," Bitter said. "Those must be determined from the radiation emitted by the plasma." The spectrometer designed by Bitter and Hill measures both the plasma temperatures and flow velocities, and it appears to offer a window onto the world of fusion plasmas.

The observed plasma flow could be beneficial to progress in fusion research, according to the PPPL scientists. "ITER and future reactors cannot rely on the injection of neutral beams to impart momentum to the plasma and control the toroidal flow," Bitter said, noting that this is due to the scale of the experimental reactor presently under construction in France. ITER must rely on self-generated or RF-driven flow, meaning that this research is highly relevant to those projects.

The new spectrometer allows researchers to study self-generated and RF-driven flow with the goal to control it in future reactors so that plasmas can be more carefully contained.

The DOE Office of Science supports the spectrometer collaboration between the U.S. and the People's Republic of China (PRC) through the U.S.-PRC Fusion Cooperation Program.

The spectrometer project includes researchers from EAST, PPPL, and the National Fusion Research Institute (NFRI) in Korea. Bitter and Hill helped design the instrument, which was installed on EAST.

X-ray crystal spectrometers measure the frequencies and intensities of X-rays emitted by plasma impurities. Researchers can identify the impurity by the pattern of frequencies, or spectrum, of the X-ray light emitted to help them determine the plasma ion temperature, as well as the rotational velocity of the bulk plasma, from the Doppler broadening and Doppler shift of an X-ray peak.

"This Doppler shift or change in frequency is exactly the same phenomenon as the change in the pitch of a train horn as the train passes by an observer," Hill said.

The spectrometer designed by Bitter and Hill is made up of several components. It includes a "spherically bent crystal," a tiny piece of quartz that has been molded into a sphere. It also contains a two-dimensionally imaging X-ray detector and a beryllium window.

EAST scientists have installed a second spectrometer on the tokamak based on the first spectrometer's design. Similar spectrometers designed by Bitter and Hill have been installed on experimental fusion machines in Korea and Japan, and at the Plasma and Fusion Science Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as well.

Researchers at PPPL, managed by Princeton University and funded by the DOE's Office of Science, collaborate with scientists around the world to develop fusion as an energy source for the world. Fusion is the process that powers the Sun and other stars. In the interior of stars, matter is converted into energy by the fusion, or joining, of the nuclei of light atoms to form heavier elements."

"China and the rise of the driverless car
Written by Harry Fairhead
Thursday, 11 August 2011 13:52

While Google makes headlines with its driverless car and even manages to lobby Nevada to legalize driverless cars on the public road - China quietly pushes ahead on its own.

reports that on the 14th of July a Hongqui HQ3 travelled 286km in three hours 20 minutes without a driver at the wheel on an expressway linking Changsha and Wuhan, the capitals of Hunan and Hubei provinces.


The project is being developed by the National University of Defense Technology.

One of the research team is reported as saying:

"We only set a maximum speed and then left everything to the car itself. It knew the speed limits, traffic patterns, lane changes and roads using video cameras and radar sensors to detect other cars. It was all controlled by a command center in the trunk."

Technical details are limited but it is claimed that GPS wasn't used to navigate the car and it relied on its sensors not only to stay on the road but to work out which road to stay on. Unlike Google's the Chinese driverless car uses computer vision to navigate aided by laser range finders. As a result it cannot drive and night and so the entire journey had to be completed during daylight. It also encountered some problems with fog and indistinct road markings. It could be argued that relying on computer vision is a more sophisticated approach than using GPS and laser range finders but without more information it is difficult to be sure. As well as just driving in a single lane the car overtook other cars a reported 67 times at an average of 87km/h.


Although no reason for building the driverless car has been given the statistics stress that "its" reaction times are around 40ms compared to 500ms for a human and so safety seems to be a concern. However Google's car has logged 140,000 miles with only two minor accidents to its name and one of those was caused by a human driver. It will take some effort to match this performance.

China is late into the driverless car race and members of the team are aware of the doubt that surrounds the project because of the speed that they have been able to ... well.. it has to be said.. get up to speed.

"Some foreign experts asked me directly whether the artificial intelligence system was really developed with our own proprietary technologies, while some humorously asked where the three tiny robots in charge of the accelerator, brakes and direction hid in the car!"

The project isn't over and now they are co-operating with China's First Auto Works to produce an even better and perhaps commercial version."

China cracks Europe's light rail market.



China to export first light rail train to Europe
By Liang Zhanye (People's Daily Online)
14:45, August 11, 2011

On Aug.10, the first high-tech light rail train produced for export to Europe came off the line, marking a significant achievement for CSR Zhuzhou Electric Locomotive Co., Ltd.

Cracking the European market, which has the world's highest standards for rail transit, is extremely difficult, said Xu Zongxiang, the general manager of CSR Zhuzhou Electric Locomotive Co., Ltd.

"[It] signifies that our innovation capability of equipment and technology in rail transit has been approved by the world class market," Xu said.

The train is destined for Izmir, the third largest city in Turkey, which has light rail that goes through crowded areas with many sharp curves. The pathways are only 30 meters in radius and have abrupt slopes, so the safety and comfort of the train are a major concern.

"Its rail transit market has been monopolized by international enterprises from Europe, the United States, Japan and Korea for a long time."

The breakthroughs made by CSR Zhuzhou Electric Locomotive Co., Ltd. benefited from the individualized system design and the mature solutions approved by IRIS of the International Union of Railways.

It has been said that the train’s maximum velocity is 80 kilometers per hour, and every single train has its individual operation mobility so that they can be organized into different groups on the basis of the number of passengers in the morning and evening.

The articulated bogie can help the train freely swing and smoothly turn. When running down steep hills, the attraction between the track and the magnet assembly near the wheels can make an immediately brake. Designs like these greatly increase the comfort and safety. According to the professional test, indexes, including derailment coefficients, are two levels higher than other trains of a similar type.

In regard to quality, there are more than 10,000 parts approved by European standards along with the materials complying with the world’s highest BS6853 environmental protection standard. Before the train left the factory, its durability and doors were tested 5,000 times and 1,000 times, respectively, as well as 12,400 cables that were examined one by one. Nuoka, the supervision engineer dispatched from Turkey, is satisfied with the whole quality and every single link in the production chain as a witness of the whole production process.

It is said that 30 trains of this type will come into service in Izmir, the third largest city in Turkey, successively over the next two years. Fu Jianguo, the vice president of CSR Zhuzhou Electric Locomotive Cp., Ltd. announced that the company should regard the light rail project in Turkey as a stepping-stone to success and strive to create an internationalized CSR Zhuzhou Electric Locomotive Co., Ltd.

I just glance through the last few posts, and suddenly have a feeling:

This (the thread) should be the treasure cave for any China-basher! - You guys just nailed almost every piece of news a basher would prey for, and an "usual audiance" in half world away would usually scary for, while they would not give any of your guys any credits.

Also, I would tell any friend from Propaganda Department I know (if any), to stick to this thread. A hell lot easier to write a Baguwen report, if citing from here, while do not give any of your guys any credits.

Sigh... see how "credit-less" you guys are doing? (At least you guys made effort to "put things together")

Schumacher said:

China cracks Europe's light rail market.

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China to export first light rail train to Europe
By Liang Zhanye (People's Daily Online)
14:45, August 11, 2011

On Aug.10, the first high-tech light rail train produced for export to Europe came off the line, marking a significant achievement for CSR Zhuzhou Electric Locomotive Co., Ltd.

Cracking the European market, which has the world's highest standards for rail transit, is extremely difficult, said Xu Zongxiang, the general manager of CSR Zhuzhou Electric Locomotive Co., Ltd.

"[It] signifies that our innovation capability of equipment and technology in rail transit has been approved by the world class market," Xu said.

The train is destined for Izmir, the third largest city in Turkey, which has light rail that goes through crowded areas with many sharp curves. The pathways are only 30 meters in radius and have abrupt slopes, so the safety and comfort of the train are a major concern.

"Its rail transit market has been monopolized by international enterprises from Europe, the United States, Japan and Korea for a long time."

The breakthroughs made by CSR Zhuzhou Electric Locomotive Co., Ltd. benefited from the individualized system design and the mature solutions approved by IRIS of the International Union of Railways.

It has been said that the train’s maximum velocity is 80 kilometers per hour, and every single train has its individual operation mobility so that they can be organized into different groups on the basis of the number of passengers in the morning and evening.

The articulated bogie can help the train freely swing and smoothly turn. When running down steep hills, the attraction between the track and the magnet assembly near the wheels can make an immediately brake. Designs like these greatly increase the comfort and safety. According to the professional test, indexes, including derailment coefficients, are two levels higher than other trains of a similar type.

In regard to quality, there are more than 10,000 parts approved by European standards along with the materials complying with the world’s highest BS6853 environmental protection standard. Before the train left the factory, its durability and doors were tested 5,000 times and 1,000 times, respectively, as well as 12,400 cables that were examined one by one. Nuoka, the supervision engineer dispatched from Turkey, is satisfied with the whole quality and every single link in the production chain as a witness of the whole production process.

It is said that 30 trains of this type will come into service in Izmir, the third largest city in Turkey, successively over the next two years. Fu Jianguo, the vice president of CSR Zhuzhou Electric Locomotive Cp., Ltd. announced that the company should regard the light rail project in Turkey as a stepping-stone to success and strive to create an internationalized CSR Zhuzhou Electric Locomotive Co., Ltd.

Click to expand...

How does Turkey represent the European Market when its not even a member of the EU.

Wiki calls it"is a Eurasian country located 97% in Asia (mostly in the Anatolian peninsula) and 3% in East Thrace in Europe.: