China Science & Technology Forum

[JSCh]

China gives 2 military researchers top science, tech award
By Deng Xiaoci Source:Global Times Published: 2019/1/8 17:43:39

Radar expert Liu Yongtan (right) and defense engineering expert Qian Qihu were given the 2018 State Preeminent Science and Technology Award — the nation's highest scientific award — in Beijing on Tuesday. Photo:VCG

Graphics: Prize money for major science awards

Two senior military scientists won China's annual top science and technology award on Tuesday, receiving a prize of 8 million yuan ($1.17 million) each, greater than last year's Nobel Prize amount.

Liu Yongtan, a radar expert and academician from both the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE), and Qian Qihu, a defense engineering expert, who is also a CAE academician, received the 2018 State Preeminent Science and Technology Award during a conference held at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, who granted award medals and certificates to the winners, shook hands with them and expressed congratulations.

The cash prize for each of the two military scientists on Tuesday was 8 million yuan ($1.17 million), 3 million yuan more than last year's prize money. It is also higher than the Nobel Prize amount for 2018, which was set at Swedish kronor 9.0 million, roughly $1 million.

During the past 20 years, 31 Chinese scientists have been granted this honor, including Nobel Prize-winning pharmacologist Tu Youyou and "Father of Hybrid Rice" Yuan Longping.

Liu, 82, is the forerunner of China's first all-time, all-weather, over-the-horizon maritime early warning system that targets enemies both from sea and air, and also spearheaded the development of the nation's sea-targeting radar.

Over his more than six-decade career, Qian, 81, helped establish the theoretical system for China's modern defense engineering theoretical system, overcoming technical difficulties for defense engineering during nuclear attacks.

What the two senior scientists have in common is they successfully applied the national defense theories they developed in present engineering practices, which substantially enhanced the country's capability to resist external threats, Song Zhongping, a Beijing-based military expert and TV commentator, said on Tuesday.

Yang's over-the-horizon early warning radar system lays the foundation for the "country's first line of defense," which is also why the country was able to establish the Air Defense Identification Zone in the East China Sea, Song told the Global Times.

According to China Global Television Network on Tuesday, under Liu's direction, China's first high-frequency radar system became a leader in target detection in the 1990s.

And it represented the modern radar and also has wide applications in aerospace, navigation, fisheries and coastal oil development.

China's nuclear strategy follows the principle of "No first use." It requires the country to have the capability to withstand a nuclear attack before it responds with its strategic weapons.

"Qian's work achieves that to guarantee the safety of the country's strategic weapons and launch and storage facilities, as well as the commander's safety during extreme times," Song said.

Qian compared his work to the underground "Steel Great Wall" and many places that already play a part in Chinese people's lives also have links to Qian's work, including the Nanjing Yangtze River Tunnel, the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge, and the giant South-to-North Water Transfer Project, said the CGTN report.

Five foreign experts, including four from the US and one from Sweden, were also given the China International Science and Technology Cooperation Award.

China aims to turn into an innovative country by 2020, when scientific progress will contribute nearly 60 percent of the nation's economic growth, according to a national science and technology development plan.

 

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Chinese scientists develop anticorrosion method for steel in marine engineering
Source: Xinhua| 2019-01-08 14:31:57|Editor: mmm


BEIJING, Jan. 8 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists have used marine bacteria to inhibit the corrosion of steel materials through genetic editing, according to the China Science Daily Tuesday.

Corrosion in the marine environment is an international problem that not only causes huge economic losses but also poses a threat to the safety of marine engineering.

Most of the traditional anti-corrosion methods rely on chemical or electrochemical means, however, they typically have a high cost and are not environmentally friendly.

Scientists from the Shanghai Maritime University and the South China Sea Institute of Oceanology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences have found that a non-pathogenic marine bacteria extracted from the South China Sea can form a biofilm on the surface of the steel. Through genetic editing, the biofilm shows lasting anticorrosion capabilities.

Based on the research, scientists are also developing new types of corrosion-resistant steel which can not only withstand the harsh marine environment but are also compatible with coral growth. They can be applied to island and reef construction as well as restoration of coral reefs.

The research was published in the journal ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces.

 

[JSCh]

China's homegrown anti-cancer drug wins international recognition
Source: Xinhua| 2019-01-09 16:03:52|Editor: ZX


BEIJING, Jan. 9 (Xinhua) -- China's homegrown drug Sintilimab designed for treating relapsed or refractory classic Hodgkin lymphoma has won international recognition, with its clinical trial research published as the cover paper in the January issue of The Lancet Haematology.

Hodgkin lymphoma is a rare malignant lymphoma that occurs mostly in young people between the ages of 20 and 40. Although the cure rate of early treatment is high, patients have a 20 percent chance of recurrence after their first treatment. Patients with relapsed or refractory classic Hodgkin lymphoma lack effective treatment in China.

Sintilimab, an anti-PD-1 drug, is a kind of checkpoint inhibitor, an emerging anti-cancer therapeutic modality that boosts the immune system to help the body target and kill tumors.

Professor Shi Yuankai from the Cancer Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, led the clinical research, which enrolled 96 patients with relapsed or refractory classic Hodgkin's lymphoma from 18 hospitals in China.

Results showed that Sintilimab has favorable activity and acceptable toxicity in Chinese patients with relapsed or refractory classical Hodgkin lymphoma, with 80.4 percent of the patients showing an objective response.

Stephen M Ansell from the Division of Hematology at the Mayo Clinic commented that Sintilimab is a "highly effective treatment which potentially improves the outcomes of patients with classical Hodgkin lymphoma worldwide."

Sintilimab was approved for market authorization by China's National Medical Products Administration in December 2018.

"The approval will bring more treatment options for cancer patients in China," Shi said.

 

[JSCh]

Physics - Synopsis: One-Way Sound Transport
January 9, 2019

An array of air channels behaves as an “acoustic Chern insulator” in which sound waves travel only around the edges and only in one direction.

Y. Ding/Nanjing University​

Topological phases are defined by geometric constraints, which makes them especially robust against environmental influences. Although typically an electronic phenomenon, topological phases can also occur in acoustic systems. Researchers have now assembled an array of air channels to create the acoustic version of a topological phase known as a Chern insulator. Their acoustic device limits the propagation of sound waves to a single direction, which could benefit medical ultrasound and the control of environmental noise.

Some of the first acoustic topological systems were periodic arrays of scattering elements that blocked sound propagation except along their edges—similar to what happens for electronic transport in topological insulators. In these acoustic prototypes, the edge propagation was time-reversible, meaning sound waves could travel both forwards and backwards. The advantage of going to time-irreversible propagation is that edge-traveling sound waves would be less susceptible to scattering losses from defects.

To create their time-irreversible acoustic material, Jianchun Cheng from Nanjing University in China and co-workers connected several time-irreversible units, or “atoms,” via waveguides to make a hexagonal array. Each atom consisted of a ring cavity in which air was spun around at high speed. Previous work with single atoms had shown that sound waves enter and exit the cavity in only one direction. Cheng and co-workers managed to synchronize the acoustic modes of multiple atoms by relying on high-order acoustic resonances within each atom. They observed time-irreversible sound wave propagation along the edges of the array and verified that these one-way edge modes were immune to defects, such as cavities in which air spins the wrong way or not at all.

This research is published in Physical Review Letters.

Experimental Demonstration of Acoustic Chern Insulators
Yujiang Ding, Yugui Peng, Yifan Zhu, Xudong Fan, Jing Yang, Bin Liang, Xuefeng Zhu, Xiangang Wan, and Jianchun Cheng
Phys. Rev. Lett. 122, 014302 (2019)
Published January 9, 2019​

–Michael Schirber
Michael Schirber is a Corresponding Editor for Physics based in Lyon, France.

 

[JSCh]

Scientists realize a three-dimensional 'topological' medium for electromagnetic waves
January 9, 2019
by Chong Yidong, School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Nanyang Technological University

Credit: CC0 Public Domain​

Topological insulators are exotic states of matter that physicists have been intensely studying for the past decade. Their most intriguing feature is that they can be rigorously distinguished from all other materials using a mathematical concept known as "topology." This mathematical property grants topological insulators the ability to transport electric signals without dissipation, via special quantum states called "topological surface states."

However, topological insulators need not only be realized with electrons. Physicists have also devised photonic topological insulators, synthetic materials that impart light waves with distinct topological features, allowing light (rather than electric currents) to flow via topological surface states. Unlike electronic topological insulators, photonic topological insulators can operate easily at room temperature, among other advantages. As a result, photonic topological insulators could have applications in future optical devices, such as high-power lasers and optical diodes.

A team of researchers from Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore, and Zhejiang University, China, has announced the development of the world's first three-dimensional (3-D) photonic topological insulator. In a paper to be published in an upcoming issue of Nature, the team reports that a specially-designed 3-D array of resonators can act as a topological insulator for microwaves. They have observed unambiguous evidence for the signature topological surface states, in the form of microwaves that flow effortlessly along 2-D sheets embedded within the 3-D volume of their sample.

"Previous researchers were able to make two-dimensional photonic topological insulators. But in spite of many theoretical proposals over the years, nobody had been able to realize a 3-D version," says Associate Professor Baile Zhang of NTU, who co-supervised the project. He notes that 3-D topological insulators have important capabilities, including the ability to channel topological surface states along all possible spatial directions. In one of their experiments, the researchers showed that microwaves can be guided efficiently along a 2-D surface containing zigzag-like folds.

The team constructed the 3-D photonic topological insulator out of a stack of thin plastic sheets embedded with metal antennas acting as tiny electromagnetic resonators. The key breakthrough was made when they realized how to tailor the resonators to interact with electromagnetic waves in a very specific way, granting the waves the desired topological characteristics.

"Since the sheets are made using well-established technology for printing circuit boards, this design is cheap and simple to implement," explains Professor Hongsheng Chen of Zhejiang University, another co-supervisor of the project. "By comparison, other proposals previously published in the scientific literature involved using non-standard ceramic or magnetic materials, which are very difficult to work with if you want to make a real device."

Dr. Yihao Yang, a postdoctoral researcher at NTU who was the lead author on the paper, said that the team was able to build a compelling scientific case by constructing detailed maps of how electromagnetic waves travel within the photonic topological insulator. "By carefully inserting an electromagnetic field probe into the sample, we measured the field distributions throughout the sample. This allowed us to reconstruct the 'dispersion relations' that serve as the physical signatures of topological insulators," he said.

Associate Professor Yidong Chong, another member of the NTU team, observed that this work is the first realization of a synthetic 3-D topological insulator not based on the flow of electric current. "This is an example of the universality of physics," he said. "A phenomenon arising in one setting, like quantum materials, can be reproduced in another setting, in this case an artificial medium for electromagnetic waves. The key ingredient is that they obey the same equations and theoretical concepts." He suggests that the 3-D photonic topological insulator may provide an interesting setting for studying fundamental physics, as the topological surface states are governed by the same equations as massless 2-D electrons obeying Einstein's theory of relativity.

The current 3-D photonic topological insulator is limited to electromagnetic waves, at relatively low frequencies. "If we can scale it to optical frequencies, that is to say waves of visible light, there could be applications for creating optical computer chips, lasers, and all sorts of interesting optical devices," says NTU's Professor Zhang.



https://phys.org/news/2019-01-scientists-three-dimensional-topological-medium-electromagnetic.html

Yihao Yang, Zhen Gao, Haoran Xue, Li Zhang, Mengjia He, Zhaoju Yang, Ranjan Singh, Yidong Chong, Baile Zhang, Hongsheng Chen. Realization of a three-dimensional photonic topological insulator. Nature (2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-018-0829-0​

 

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China is undergoing something of a boom in accelerator facilities at the moment. Tell me about some of those plans.
The spallation neutron source in Dongguan is now operating. It is small but good enough. IHEP is also planning a 1.4-kilometre-circumference light source to be built in Huairou, northern Beijing, at a cost of 4.8 billion yuan. This is a circular electron accelerator that can generate synchrotron radiation — X-rays with extremely high intensity. These are useful for almost every research discipline, including materials science, chemistry, biology, environmental science, geology and medicine. We believe the government is going to give its final approval for the project by the beginning of next year, and then we can start construction. We think it would be a world-leading machine. Most light sources are upgrades from existing machines, so they are limited. We can use the best configurations, the best technologies, without constraints.

China's High Energy Photon Source Feasibility Study Report Approved
Jan 11, 2019

China's High Energy Photon Source (HEPS) project moved one step closer to reality with approval of the HEPS Feasibility Study Report by the National Development and Reform Commission, China' s top economic planning body, on Dec. 28, 2018.

HEPS will be one of the core facilities of Huairou Science City, located in Beijing's suburban Huairou District.

It will have a beam energy of 6 GeV and an ultra-low emittance ring-based synchrotron radiation light source, allowing China to join an elite global group of high energy synchrotron radiation light sources. It will offer strong support for research fields related to domestic needs and lead to revolutionary innovation in various industries.

Construction is expected to begin in 2019 and take 6.5 years. During Phase I, 14 beamlines, the accelerator and some other auxiliary buildings will be built.

The project was originally proposed in 2008 and listed as one of China' s large research infrastructure projects in the country' s 13th Five-year Plan in 2016.

Synchrotron radiation facilities are indispensable in numerous frontier research areas. The HEPS is a kilometer-scale, 6 GeV, ultralow- emittance storage-ring-based light source, planned to be built in Beijing. (Image by Institute of High Energy Physics of Chinese Academy of Sciences)



China's High Energy Photon Source Feasibility Study Report Approved---Chinese Academy of Sciences

 

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China's first 3D-printed resin bridge ready to welcome visitors in Shanghai
CGTN
Published on Jan 12, 2019

China's first 3D-printed resin bridge was installed successfully in the central park in Shanghai's Taopu area.

 

[JSCh]

When Choosing a Mate, These Female Birds Prefer Brains Over Beauty or Brawn
After observing initially scorned male budgies performing complex cognitive tasks, females shifted mating preferences

Budgie love triangles are more complex than you might think (Pixabay)​

By Meilan Solly
SMITHSONIAN.COM
JANUARY 11, 2019

When it comes to affairs of the heart, there are a variety of factors at play: mutual attraction, shared interests, an intangible spark that eventually leads to love. But in Darwinian terms, the recipe for reproduction is far more clinical, with animals seeking mates based on the potential evolutionary advantage—often superior cognition skills—offered by a match.

Now, a new study published in the journal Science suggests that female budgerigars, a species of small Australian parrots better known as budgies, employ this selective brand of logic when playing the mating game. As Nick Carne writes for Cosmos, a team of Chinese and Dutch researchers found that female budgies preferred brains over beauty and brawn. The birds would even change their selection if the previously overlooked mate learned a new trick.

To test budgies’ mating preferences, a team of researchers led by Jiani Chen of the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Zoology, put 34 male and 17 female birds to the test. According to Forbes, the animals were split into a problem-solving group of 18 males and 9 females and a control group of 16 males and 8 females.

In order to watch interactions unfold, the scientists placed three birds into a divided enclosure in which the female could only engage with one male at a time, reports Agence France-Presse. Females in both groups were observed choosing between two similar-looking males, as determined by which male the female bird opted to spent more time with. Past studies structured this way have shown that females will gravitate toward males with beautiful feathers or skilled singing, as two behavioral experts not involved in the study, Georg Striedter and Nancy Burley—both from the University of California, Irvine—explain in an editorial analyzing the new study that was also published in Science.

In trials, the team used food to sweeten the pot. At first, the birds were allowed to chow down freely until the female bird appeared to show a preference for one beau over the other. But once it was clear which male bird had won the female budgie’s attention, the team introduced a game-changing new element to the experimental group, upending seemingly stable pairings in favor of more complex love triangles.

While the new couple continued courting, the researchers trained the rejected budgie to open two puzzle toys—a petri dish and a three-step box—filled with food.

Next, Carne reports for Cosmos, the scientists brought the newly-skilled budgie back out to the mating arena. As the female bird looked on, the once-lovelorn male successfully demonstrated his new puzzle-solving abilities, while the hapless untrained male tried and failed to keep his paramour’s attention.

Following this observational period, the female budgies again chose between the two potential mates. This time, the lady birds overwhelmingly opted for the previously spurned male, leading the team to conclude, that “female budgerigars modified their mate preference in favor of trained males after observing them perform complex foraging tasks.”

Still, the study has its faults: As Striedter and Burley note, the female budgies didn’t have the opportunity to perform the foraging puzzle themselves, indicating they may not have fully understood its merits as “a problem in need of a clever solution.” Instead, it’s possible the birds saw the trained males’ food-securing abilities as a display of physical strength, or perhaps a more impressive show of foraging effort.

Alex Kacelnik, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Oxford who was not involved with the study, tells Forbes that the team’s findings speak to two distinct explanations: “The females may prefer competent males because they will provide direct benefits (i.e., better males increase the female’s access to food) or because they have heritable traits that are passed to the offspring.”

Overall, Kacelnik says, “The theoretical implications of this study are rich, and worth tackling in depth.”



When Choosing a Mate, These Female Birds Prefer Brains Over Beauty or Brawn | Smart News | Smithsonian

Jiani Chen, Yuqi Zou, Yue-Hua Sun, Carel ten Cate. Problem-solving males become more attractive to female budgerigars. Science (2019). DOI: 10.1126/science.aau8181​

 

[JSCh]

China builds mammoth detector to probe mysteries of neutrino mass

BEIJING—It isn't easy to weigh a ghost. After neutrinos were hypothesized in 1930, it took physicists 67 years to prove that these elusive particles—which zip through our bodies by the trillions each second—have mass at all. Now, a Chinese-led team is planning a mammoth neutrino detector, meant to capture enough neutrinos from nearby nuclear reactors to determine which of the three known types, or flavors, of neutrinos are heavier or lighter. That mass hierarchy could be key to explaining how neutrinos get their mass, and measuring it would be a coup for China's particle physicists.

Last month, scientists gathered in Jiangmen, in China's southern Guangdong province, to review plans for the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO). Groundbreaking is slated for later this year on the $300 million facility, which China aims to complete by 2019. The facility, which backers say will be twice as sensitive as existing detectors, should not only pin down key properties of neutrinos themselves but also detect telltale neutrinos from nuclear reactions in the sun, Earth, and supernovas.

Other planned facilities aim to reveal the mass hierarchy (see table), but China could be the first to arrive at an ironclad result. If China can pull it off, says William McDonough, a geologist at the University of Maryland, College Park, JUNO "will not only lead to breakthroughs in neutrino physics, but revolutionize the field of geology and astrophysics." A successful project would also mark another triumph for China's neutrino research, 2 years after the Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment in Guangdong nailed a key parameter describing how different types of neutrinos morph into one another (Science, 16 March 2012, p. 1287).

In 1998, physicists working with the subterranean particle detector Super-Kamiokande in Japan showed that neutrinos of one flavor, muon neutrinos generated by cosmic rays in the atmosphere, can change flavor as they zip through Earth. In 2001, researchers at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory in Canada proved that electron neutrinos from the sun do the same. Such neutrino "oscillations" prove that neutrinos have mass: Without it, the particles would move at light speed and—according to relativity—time would stand still for them, making change impossible.

Knowing a neutrino has mass isn't the same as knowing what it weighs. In the simplest model, neutrino oscillations depend on just six parameters—the three mass differences among the neutrinos and three abstract "mixing angles." Physicists have measured all six—including the last mixing angle, which was measured by Daya Bay. They know that two of the neutrinos are close in mass and one is further off. But they don't know whether there are two lighter neutrinos and one heavier one—the so-called normal hierarchy—or an inverse hierarchy of two heavier ones and one light one.

How the masses shake out "is fundamental for a whole series of questions," says Wang Yifang, director of the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) here, including whether neutrinos, like other particles, get mass from tangling with Higgs bosons or from a more exotic mechanism. The answer depends on whether the neutrino is, oddly, its own antiparticle. Physicists may be able to tell that by searching for a weird new type of radioactive decay. But, if it even exists, that decay would occur at an observable rate only if neutrinos follow an inverse hierarchy.

To explore this frontier, an international team led by Wang will build a detector 700 meters beneath a granite hill near Jiangmen, equidistant from two nuclear power plant complexes. A sphere about 38 meters in diameter will contain 20,000 tons of a material known as a liquid scintillator. About 60 times a day, one of the sextillion or so electron neutrinos spraying from the reactors every second should bump into an atomic nucleus, sparking a flash of scintillation light that the detector can measure and analyze. In the 53 kilometers that the neutrinos will traverse from reactor to detector, about 70% will change flavor, says Cao Jun, a particle physicist at IHEP. By studying the energy spectrum of the neutrinos, physicists should be able to tease out the mass hierarchy. "But it's not going to be easy because the amount of energy to be measured is minuscule," Cao says. He estimates the measurement will require 6 years of data-taking.

The key to JUNO's success will be its energy resolution. The largest liquid scintillation detector to date—KamLAND in Japan, which has 1000 tons of detector fluid—can only make out energy differences of greater than 6%. JUNO needs to double the resolution to 3%—no mean feat, especially as the larger volume of scintillator itself absorbs more light.

If it works, JUNO should also make finer measurements of the known mixing angles and mass differences. "This is particularly important for the search for a possible fourth form of neutrinos," says Lothar Oberauer of the Technical University of Munich in Germany. If the sum of all oscillations doesn't add up to 100%, then the data would point to a fourth flavor (Science, 21 October 2011, p. 304)—a possibility that could topple the standard model of particle physics and help explain a host of astronomical puzzles.

Another mission for JUNO is to observe geoneutrinos emitted during radioactive decay in Earth's deep interior, which generates heat that helps drive plate tectonics and power our planet's magnetic field. Detecting geoneutrinos "is the only way to get a glimpse of Earth's internal heat budget and distribution," McDonough says. The three facilities now detecting geoneutrinos, including the revamped Sudbury detector, record about 45 a year in total. JUNO should spot about 500 a year, enough to test various models of Earth's composition and heat flow, McDonough says. And that would score China another triumph in neutrino physics.

China hopes its planned JUNO detector, 38 meters across, will be the first to nail which of the three neutrino flavors is heavier or lighter.
CREDITS: (INSET) IHEP; (SOURCE) M. BLENNOW ET AL. ARXIV 1311.1822 (2013)​

Source: Science Magazine

Science 7 February 2014:
Vol. 343 no. 6171 pp. 590-591
DOI: 10.1126/science.343.6171.590

China Builds Mammoth Detector to Probe Mysteries of Neutrino Mass

_____________________________________________________________​

Public Release: 28-Jan-2015
Particle physicists from Mainz University participate in JUNO neutrino experiment

Project designed to undertake precise measurement of neutrino oscillation should provide insight into neutrino mass hierarchy

• Johannes Gutenberg
• Universitaet Mainz

This news release is available in German.

The construction of the facilities for the JUNO neutrino experiment has been initiated with an official groundbreaking ceremony near the south Chinese city of Jiangmen. Involved in the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) will be more than fifty institutions from China, the US and Europe - with six from Germany alone. Starting in 2020, JUNO will begin to produce new information about the particle characteristics of the neutrino. "The aim of JUNO is to precisely measure the oscillations of neutrinos for the purpose of investigating one of the major issues in neutrino physics today - the sequence or hierarchy of neutrino masses," explains Professor Michael Wurm of the Institute of Physics at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU). He is acting as one of the German JUNO partners and was at the site to watch the start of work on the underground lab.

Neutrinos are elementary particles that have next to no mass and that are emitted by processes such as fusion in the sun and radioactive decays of fission products in nuclear reactors. They have no electric charge and are subject only to the weak nuclear force. This means that they can penetrate matter almost unhindered and can only be captured using massive detectors that are usually located underground. There are three different types of neutrinos - electron, muon, and tau neutrinos. They can change from one type to another, a phenomenon known as neutrino oscillation. It is possible to determine the mass of the particles by studying the oscillation patterns.

"Oscillations only occur because neutrinos have three different masses. But which is the lightest of the three and which is the heaviest? The JUNO experiment will be sensitive enough to allow us to clearly sequence the three neutrino types," said Wurm. The particle physicist, who is also participating in the Borexino experiment that investigates solar neutrinos and is located under Italy's Gran Sasso mountain, sees this as an important step forward for the experimental efforts to find a violation of matter/antimatter symmetry in neutrino oscillations. Scientists hope to find out why matter and antimatter did not completely annihilate one another after the Big Bang.

It will only be possible to determine the sequence of neutrino masses through tiny changes in the oscillation patterns that cannot be detected by currently running experiments. The JUNO detector is thus being built in its own underground lab, which is located some 50 kilometers from two reactor complexes on China's southern coast. The neutrinos emitted by the reactors will be registered in the form of small light flashes in the liquid scintillator target located at the center of the detector. Carefully shielded from radiation background, 20,000 tons of the mineral oil-like target liquid will be contained in an acrylic sphere of 35 meter diameters. Its outer surface will be equipped by a dense array of light sensors detecting the scintillation light. Six years of construction are foreseen for the new detector that will be 100 times larger than the Borexino experiment. Upon start of data taking in 2021, the scientists expect that another five years of measurement will be necessary to answer the question of neutrino mass hierarchy.

Schematic depiction of the JUNO detector showing the shielded acrylic sphere (lower right). The detector is surrounded by a pool of water to protect it against background radiation (upper left).
source/©: Michael Wurm​

Particle physicists from Mainz University participate in JUNO neutrino experiment | EurekAlert! Science News

_________________________________________________________​

The Sixth JUNO Collaboration Meeting Held at IHEP
2016-01-05

The Sixth JUNO (Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory) Collaboration Meeting was held at IHEP on July 13-17, 2015. More than 100 scholars from institutions and universities at home plus about 50 scholars from abroad attended the meeting.

The meeting was chaired in turns by Wang Yifang, spokesperson of the JUNO Collaboration and Cao Jun, Gioacchino Ranucci, deputy spokespersons of the Collaboration. Wang Yifang introduced the progress of JUNO; he emphasized the critical milestones of the JUNO construction. JUNO is facing fierce international competition. Plans must be adequate, construction milestones must be met, and experiment must start according to the milestones.

At the meeting, Li Xiaonan and researchers from all the sub-systems reported their progress respectively. Reviews on the design of key components were performed, including the review on the central detector, the electronics and the photo-multiplier. Experts suggested that more attention should be paid to reliability, tolerance and heat radiation in the system designs. These suggestions are very significant to the detailed designs in the next phase.

The Collaboration accepted new members at this meeting. They are the University of Milan-Bicocca, the University of Maryland and the Catholic University of Chile. The Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and the Moscow State University were accepted as observers. So far, the Collaboration has boasted 55 formal members. The meeting also discussed and passed the rules on paper publication. It is decided that the next Collaboration meeting will be held in Xiamen University in January, 2016.

Neutrino observatory is whole new game
Yang Meiping
02:22 UTC+8, 2019-01-15

The excavation and construction of an area 700 meters underground for the Jiangmen neutrino observatory has been completed, and lab equipment will be installed soon. It was announced yesterday at a Shanghai Jiao Tong University conference.

The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory will be ready for experiments in 2021, and is expected to run for at least 20 years.

The research team, led by Chinese scientists with participation from 600 scientists from 17 countries and regions, is expected to determine the neutrino mass hierarchy in six years.

“Neutrinos are one of the fundamental particles which make up the universe,” said Xu Donglian, a scientist from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and a member in the program.

“The findings of the neutrino mass hierarchy will help us know more about space and the world, such as the evolution of stars and black holes and also the detailed structure of the Earth core.”

Neutrinos are among the least known particles as they interact only via weak subatomic force and gravity.

They had been believed to be weightless as photons until scientists found in 1998 that they turned from one type to another when flying, a phenomenon called “neutrino oscillation.”

Three types of neutrinos are currently known but many more discoveries await, such as the precise values of their masses, their mass hierarchy and whether they are antiparticles of each other.

In 2014, the Jiangmen neutrino observatory program was launched in Jiangmen City, south China’s Guangdong Province, to examine the remaining problems.

The huge facility is being built 700m underground to avoid interference from cosmic rays.

The space has been excavated and the basic structure built. It will host a spheroidal facility, with a diameter of 35 meters and weighing 20,000 tons.

The “ball” will be assembled with numerous components attached with super acute detectors to catch and analyze neutrinos.

By studying neutrinos sent from the nearby nuclear plants in Yangjiang and Taishan, researchers hope to not only determine the neutrino mass hierarchy, but also measure neutrino oscillations more accurately.

The team will also conduct research in other cutting-edge areas, such as supernova neutrinos, atmospheric neutrinos, solar neutrinos, Earth neutrinos, sterile neutrinos, nuclear decay and detection of dark matter.

“After experiments start in Jiangmen, we will be able to find answers to many key scientific problems, such as the neutrino mass hierarchy and the supernova burst mechanism,” said Wang Yifang.

He is the director of the Jiangmen program and also director of the Institute of High Energy Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

“It will make great contributions to the understanding of micro particle physic laws, cosmology, astrophysics and geophysics,” he said.

Liu Jianglai, another scientist from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and a member in the program, said the United States and Japan were also doing similar research via different approaches, but Jiangmen had the advantage in research of low-energy neutrinos and is set to be the quickest. “We plan to solve the mass hierarchy problem within six years,” he said.

Source: SHINE Editor: Zhang Liuhao

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1:12 model undergoing test in Dec 2018

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[JSCh]

China’s magnetic field reaches 90T, joins world’s top 3
(People's Daily Overseas New Media) 16:14, January 16, 2019

Photo courtesy to Xinhua ​

China has joined the top ranks of the world’s most powerful pulsed magnets with its self-developed 90-tesla pulsed magnet, which features coils that last twice as long and cheaper batteries.

“It took China only four years to transform a 70T magnetic field into 90T one, which was accomplished last December. For comparison, it took the US and Germany 20 years and 15 years, respectively,” said Li Liang, director at Wuhan National High Magnetic Field Center at Huazhong University in central China’s Hubei Province.

While the magnetic field record remains in the hands of the US, which can produce a whopping 100T, the Chinese-designed equipment is believed to hold more advantages and is expected to break new records, experts said.

China created the world’s strongest synthetic fibers by winding multiple layers of polymer fibers, which were soaked in epoxy resin to greatly improve the bearing capacity of its reflective prosperities. The coils used in the US have a life expectancy of 500 times, whereas the Chinese coils can be used 800 times, Science and Technology Daily reported.

“We created the magnet from the scratch and designed a new frame for the battery structure, which consumes 10 times less electricity than the US’ pulsed magnet at peak power,” Li told the newspaper.

The strong magnetic field enables researchers to explore new material properties and stimulate the next generation of electronic materials and chips. For example, in November 2018, a Peking University research team in Wuhan used it to discover log-periodic oscillations in ultra-quantum topological materials.

“The strong magnet not only provides convenience for domestic scientific research, but has also attracted many overseas scholars from universities like Stanford and Cambridge to seek cooperation on research projects,” Li said.

 

[JSCh]

Databank puts info at world's fingertips
By Zhang Zhihao | China Daily | Updated: 2019-01-16 07:35

The Chinese Academy of Sciences will release about 5 million gigabytes of data related to Earth sciences, biology and ecology from around globe, allowing scientists and officials worldwide to study and tackle issues in climate change, food security, disaster relief and environmental protection.

The data can be accessed on the CASEarth Databank at data.casearth.cn, which was launched on Tuesday. Around 1.8 million gigabytes of content are remote-sensing data, 2.6 million gigabytes is on biology and ecology, and 0.4 million gigabytes is on the atmosphere and ocean, said Guo Huadong, chief scientist of CASEarth, the academy's Big Earth Data Science Engineering Project.

The databank also includes more than 3.6 million items on China's biosphere, 420,000 items on microbes and 490,000 items on paleontology, Guo said. It will update 3 million gigabytes of data every year, making sure users have the latest and most comprehensive data.

"A data platform like this can help scientists and officials make data-driven discoveries and policy decisions, and promote the integration of different scientific disciplines as well as worldwide collaboration," Guo said.

The databank is one of the latest achievements of the academy's five-year CASEarth project, launched last January, said Zhang Yaping, vice-president of the academy. The project aims to create a world-class interdisciplinary data-sharing platform that can help countries around the world to solve their developmental issues and achieve sustainable growth, he added.

"The openness and sharing of scientific data have been major resources and driving forces for scientific development around the world," said Zhang.

Last year, Chinese scientists discovered a fossilized turtle in southwestern China that lived about 230 million years ago using big data analysis. The roughly 2-meter-long animal, dubbed Eorhynchochelys sinensis, filled an evolutionary hole in how reptiles developed features such as beaks and shells, according to the journal Nature, where the finding was published.

As for government use, the databank can grant officials better insights into economic, social and environmental issues, said He Guojin, a researcher at the academy's Aerospace Information Research Institute.

For example, the databank can keep track of rice sheath blight in a given Chinese province. This allows local officials to quickly identify and deal with the disease, thus minimizing its effect on agricultural production, he said.

The databank also has a wealth of information on natural resources, water flow, climate, population distribution, disaster hot spots and archaeological sites. Countries involved in the Belt and Road Initiative can use such information to serve their developmental needs, He said.

Guo, of CASEarth, said these countries might not have the necessary infrastructures to collect or analyze scientific data in the scale or depth China can, "but China is more than happy to share its knowledge and collaborate with other countries to tackle common challenges".

At the same time, through data sharing and analysis, Chinese industries and companies can have a deeper understanding of the potential risks and opportunities of overseas investment, Guo said.

 

[JSCh]

Fever Helps Fight Off Infection by Altering Immune Cells
Jan 16, 2019 by News Staff / Source

According to a study published in the journal Immunity, fever alters surface proteins on immune cells to make them better able to travel via blood vessels to reach the site of infection.

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Fever is an evolutionarily conserved response in both endothermic and ectothermic species and confers survival benefits during infection and injury. Lin et al identify that the Hsp90-a4-integrin axis serves as a thermal sensory pathway that responds to fever to promote T cell trafficking and enhance immune surveillance during infection. Image credit: Lin et al, doi: 10.1016/j.immuni.2018.11.013.

To get to an infection, lymphocytes need to adhere to the blood vessel and then transmigrate into the infected tissue or lymph node.

During this step, cell adhesion molecules known as integrins are expressed on the surface of lymphocytes. These molecules control lymphocyte trafficking during inflammation.

“One good thing about fever is that it can promote lymphocyte trafficking to the site of infection, so you will have more immune cells in the infected region that will get rid of the pathogen,” said study senior author Professor JianFeng Chen, a researcher at the Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, China.

Professor Chen and co-authors discovered that fever increases the expression of heat shock protein 90 (Hsp 90) in T lymphocytes.

Hsp 90 binds to a type of integrin on the lymphocytes — α4 integrins — which promote lymphocyte adhesion to the blood vessel and ultimately to expedited migration to the site of infection.

The team found that fever-induced Hsp90 binds to the integrin tail and induces integrin activation.

Moreover, one Hsp90 can bind to two integrins leading to a clustering of integrins on the lymphocyte surface.

As a result, the clustered integrins activate a signaling pathway that promotes lymphocyte transmigration.

“Our findings show that this mechanism not only applies to lymphocytes but also to innate immune cells like monocytes,” Professor Chen said.

“It is a general mechanism that can apply to lots of different immune cells expressing α4 integrins.”

The scientists also used mice in studies of bacterial infection and other fever models to confirm their findings.

“We found Hsp90 can only be induced at a temperature above 38.5 degrees Celsius (101.3 degrees Fahrenheit). The mechanism is targeted and effective, yet reversible,” Professor Chen said.

The researchers also believe other stresses, not just fever, can induce Hsp90 expression.

“That’s why we think that in different situations, such as autoimmune disease and cancer, this Hsp90-α4 integrin pathway may be involved,” Professor Chen said.

“In autoimmune disease, aberrant trafficking of immune cells to different organs or tissues may lead to disease.”

“But if you block this pathway, you can maybe inhibit the trafficking of the immune cells during chronic inflammation or in autoimmune diseases.”

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ChangDong Lin et al. 2019. Fever Promotes T Lymphocyte Trafficking via a Thermal Sensory Pathway Involving Heat Shock Protein 90 and α4 Integrins. Immunity 50 (1): 137-151; doi: 10.1016/j.immuni.2018.11.013



Fever Helps Fight Off Infection by Altering Immune Cells | Medicine | Sci-News.com

 

[JSCh]

Chinese scientists produce genetically-enhanced human vascular cells
Source: Xinhua| 2019-01-18 00:33:44|Editor: yan

WASHINGTON, Jan. 17 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists produced the world's first genetically-engineered human blood vessel cells, providing a promising option for therapeutic use.

The study published on Thursday in the journal Cell Stem Cell showed that human vascular cell function can be enhanced by editing a single longevity-related gene.

Scientists from the Institute of Biophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Peking University and the Institute of Zoology of CAS targeted a gene called FOXO3, an important regulator to delay cellular aging, resist stresses and enhance cardiovascular balance.

Compared with those of wildtype cells, the genetically-enhanced vascular cells could efficiently promote vascular repair and regeneration, increasing resistance to oxygen-causing injury, according to the study.

The technique can also resist the cells' transformation into tumors. The risk of tumor transformation used to be a major concern for the application of the gene-editing technology.

The researchers tested it in a mouse model with blood-shortage or ischemic injury and found that those cells promoted vascular regeneration and resisted tumor transformation both in vitro and in vivo.

They expected to use gene-editing strategies in the future to produce high-quality, safe human vascular cell grafts in a large-scale and standardized manner.

 

[JSCh]

Collision Resonances between Ultracold Atom and Molecules Visualized for the First Time
[2019-01-19]

For the first time, a team led by Prof. PAN Jianwei and Prof. ZHAO Bo at the University of Science and Technology of China, have successfully observed scattering resonances between atoms and molecules at ultralow temperatures, shedding light on the quantum nature of atom-molecule interactions that have so far only been discussed in theory. These observations greatly aid in the advancement of ultracold polar molecules and ultracold chemical physics. The new insights inform several other disciplines, such as designing high precision clocks, powerful microscopes, biological compasses and super-powerful quantum computers.

The field of chemical physics, a subcategory of quantum chemistry, has long been focusing on understanding the interactions of atoms and molecules at their very basic levels. Specifically, the aim has been to elucidate the scattering resonances, a remarkable quantum phenomenon that is expected to be a routine rather than an exception at temperatures near absolute zero. Specific to this research, the focus has been an understanding of scattering resonances of heavy molecules at ultracold temperatures, conditions under which particles move so slowly that one has enough time to both investigate and control their structure and motion with either electric or magnetic fields.

The first-of-its-kind study is published in the journal Science this week. It describes a specific type of interaction between atoms and molecules, namely potassium-40 (40K) atoms and sodium-23-potassium-40 (23Na40K) molecules. This interaction was taking place at ultralow temperatures and was manipulated by a magnetic field. The authors were thereby able to observe the specific scattering resonances, between the aforementioned atoms and molecules, which was so far only theorized.

“The molecules are heavy, and the structure of their energy field is very complex, which may result in a large amount of atom-molecule resonances,” according to ZHAO Bo. “Theory cannot predict the positions of these atom-molecule resonances. In fact, it is unclear whether the atom-molecule resonances at ultracold temperatures are resolvable and observable prior to our work,” he adds.

The news findings offer knowledge that can be applied to better understand other atom-molecule interactions. The USTC team has devised a tool that can accurately monitor particle behavior so that a plethora of other interactions and dynamics can be visualized rather than theorized.

In their future endeavors, the team aims to explore even more parameters in order to understand them. “The next step is to measure more resonances and try to understand them. Our hope is to collaborate with theoreticians and find an accurate and predictive model that can understand and predict the atom-molecule scattering at ultralow temperatures. This is the ultimate goal of studying ultracold collisions involving molecules,” according to ZHAO.

This research was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (grant number: 2018YFA0306502), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant number: 11521063), the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Anhui Initiative in Quantum Information Technologies.



Collision Resonances between Ultracold Atom and Molecules Visualized for the First Time | USTC News Center

Huan Yang, De-Chao Zhang, Lan Liu, Ya-Xiong Liu, Jue Nan, Bo Zhao, Jian-Wei Pan. Observation of magnetically tunable Feshbach resonances in ultracold 23Na40K + 40K collisions. Science (2019). DOI: 10.1126/science.aau5322​

 

[JSCh]

Researchers find the trick to molding metal at the nanoscale
By William Weir
january 22, 2019

Silver nanorods made with thermomechanical molding, ranging in size from (left to right) 0.57 millimeters, 10 micrometers, 375 nanometers, and 36 nanometers. (Jan Schroers Lab)


Numerous metals and alloys would be ideal for specific nanoscale applications — from solar energy to microelectronics — but accurately molding metals into such miniscule shapes has proved challenging. Researchers, though, have developed a process that allows manufacturers to essentially shape any metal and alloy and replicate even the smallest details.

The labs of Jan Schroers, professor of mechanical engineering & materials science at Yale, and professor Ze Liu of Wuhan University in China developed a method they call thermomechanical nanomolding that allows them to mold crystalline metals into shapes as small as a few nanometers in diameter. The breakthrough, said the researchers, could lead to new technologies in fields such as sensors, batteries, catalysis, biomaterials, and quantum materials. The results are published Jan. 22 in Physical Review Letters.

“It’s really a new way of nanomanufacturing,” Schroers said. “Today’s nanomanufacturing relies on a few materials that can be fabricated very specifically for a particular material. But our discovery suggests one technique for all metals and alloys: It allows us to fabricate essentially every metal and its combination in the periodic table in a predictable and precise manner to nano-sized features.”

Molding crystalline metals, which include most metals in their solid state, has generally posed a challenge for manufacturers, said the researchers. How moldable a material is typically depends on its “flowability” — that is, how easily it flows under certain conditions. Flowability is high in thermoplastics, gels, and glasses, but most metals are too hard when solid and too fluid in their liquid states to mold with conventional techniques at the nanoscale.

But by applying atomic diffusion, in which a change in pressures transports the atoms, the research team found that not only could they efficiently mold crystalline metals, but that decreasing the size of the mold actually made the process easier. As a result, they were able to create very long features at about 10 nanometers in diameter — 8,000 times smaller than a human hair — that would previously have been impossible to make.

Because the mechanism of diffusion is present in all metals and alloys, the process could theoretically be used across the board, said the researchers. To test the wide range of applications, the researchers tried molding gold, nickel, vanadium, iron, and numerous alloys. In each case, they could readily fabricate very small nanorods.



Researchers find the trick to molding metal at the nanoscale | YaleNews

Ze Liu, Guoxing Han, Sungwoo Sohn, Naijia Liu, Jan Schroers. Nanomolding of Crystalline Metals: The Smaller the Easier. Phys. Rev. Lett. (2019). DOI: 10.1103/physrevlett.122.036101​