China Science & Technology Forum

[JSCh]

High Energy Photon Source Starts Construction in Beijing
Jun 29, 2019

China' s High Energy Photon Source (HEPS), the country' s first high-energy synchrotron radiation light source and soon one of the world' s brightest fourth-generation synchrotron radiation facilities, began construction in Beijing' s Huairou District on June 29, 2019.

As one of the China' s key scientific and technological infrastructure projects under the 13th Five-year Plan, HEPS will be an important platform for original and innovative research in basic science and engineering.

HEPS is being built in Huairou' s Science City, located in northern Beijing, and will comprise accelerators, beamlines and auxiliary facilities. Prof. WANG Yifang, director of the Institute of High Energy Physics, said the overall shape of HEPS looked like a gigantic magnifier. “It means HEPS is a powerful tool for characterizing micro-structures.”

The storage ring of HEPS will be 1360.4m in circumference, with the electron energy of 6 GeV and the brightness of higher than 1×1022 phs/s/mm2/mrad2/0.1%BW.

"By using the 7BA (7-Bending achromat) lattice structure, the horizontal emittance of the electron beam could be smaller than 60 pm·rad, which is the main feature of fourth-generation diffraction limited light sources," said Prof. QIN Qing, HEPS project manager.

HEPS can accommodate more than 90 high-performance beamlines and stations. In the first phase, 14 public beamlines and stations will be available for researchers in the fields of engineering materials, energy and environment, medicine and food industry, petrochemistry and chemical industry, etc.

HEPS will provide high-brightness and high-coherence photon beam with a high energy up to 300 keV, while offering a nm level spatial resolution, ps level time resolution, and meV level energy resolution research platform.

In addition to providing conventional technical support for general users, HEPS will also offer an advanced technology support for research related to national development and key industrial needs.

HEPS will serve as a multi-dimensional, real-time, in-situ characterization platform for analyzing engineering materials and their structures. It can be used to observe the whole process of their evolution and provide information for the design and regulation of functional materials. HEPS will also become an important platform for international cooperation and basic science research.

Proposed in early 2016, HEPS was officially approved by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China's top economic planner, on Dec. 15, 2017. The estimated construction period is six and a half years.


High Energy Photon Source Starts Construction in Beijing---Chinese Academy of Sciences

 

[JSCh]

China sees supersonic civil aircraft prototype launch in 2035: senior engineer
Source:Global Times Published: 2019/7/1 17:03:40

Pictured is concept graph of a supersonic civil aircraft. Photo: screenshot from China Central Television

China is looking to develop a green supersonic civil aircraft and an independently developed prototype is expected to be launched around 2035, a senior aircraft engineer said.

The designing techniques of the green supersonic civil aircraft are listed among the 20 key technical problems China is working on, the China Association for Science and Technology announced on Sunday at its annual meeting held in Harbin, Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, China Central Television (CCTV) reported on Monday.

Making a supersonic civil aircraft is of great significance because it usually takes more than 10 hours for the subsonic civil aircraft currently in use for a long distance flight across continents and oceans. A supersonic aircraft can fly more than twice as fast, which would solve the problem of long travel times, the CCTV report said.
"Green supersonic civil aircraft is currently a hot research topic internationally, as well as the direction of future aerospace development," Xu Yue, a senior engineer at the Chinese Aeronautical Establishment under the state-owned Aviation Industry of China, told CCTV.

Other countries including the US, Japan and some European countries have also announced their concepts for supersonic civil planes, CCTV said.

China has already made breakthroughs in some of the key technologies like reducing air resistance and sonic boom, the report said.

"We hope that, through our own technological development and continued scientific investment, we can launch our own supersonic civil aircraft prototype in around 2035," Xu said.

 

[JSCh]

This polymer octopus reacts to heat by extending its tentacles, some of which turn from purple to pink. Credit: Jilin Univ./Univ. Manchester

MATERIALS SCIENCE * 28 JUNE 2019
Shape-shifting, colour-switching ‘octopus’ emerges from a 3D printer
Recipe includes specialized polymer and pigments that change colour when temperature rises or falls.

Just as an octopus can change colours and contort its body, so materials built by a 3D printer can alter their hues and morph into new forms.

Qingping Liu at Jilin University in Changchun, China, Lei Ren at the University of Manchester, UK, and their team used 4D printing — the 3D printing of objects that change shape over time — to make soft robots that can remodel themselves.

To do so, the researchers relied on a type of shape-memory polymer, a material that can be ‘programmed’ to change from one shape to another when heated past a certain temperature. The team mixed the polymer with pigments that change colour when heated and return to their original colour when cooled. By controlling factors such as the material’s thickness, the researchers could determine the pace of shape and colour changes.

The authors created a green-and-orange flower bud that opened into a yellow blossom, as well as an octopus with tentacles that changed colour as they unfurled.

Adv. Mater. Technol. (2019)​

Shape-shifting, colour-switching ‘octopus’ emerges from a 3D printer : Research Highlights | Nature

 

[JSCh]

China's Lianovation Develops Superconducting Magnet to Slash Metal Processing Costs
TANG SHIHUA
DATE : JUL 02 2019/SOURCE : YICAI

China's Lianovation Develops Superconducting Magnet to Slash Metal Processing Costs​

(Yicai Global) July 2 -- Chinese light-emitting diode maker Lianovation has built the world's most powerful induction heater with a newly developed superconducting magnet that could significantly cut the cost of heating and processing metals.

The new technology passed review by experts at the China Nonferrous Metals Industry Association, including renowned superconductivity specialist and Chinese Academy of Sciences member Zhao Zhongxian, the Jiangxi-based firm said in a statement yesterday.

The panel that assessed the magnet, which boasts a megawatt of heating power, believe that it could halve the cost of heating aluminium ingots to CNY130 (USD19) a ton if used in the aluminium extrusion processing industry.

Lianovation, officially Lianchuang Opto-electronic Science & Technology, did not disclose how much researching and producing the magnet cost nor reveal any commercialization plans. The heater boasts one megawatt of power.

 

[Grandy]

Scientists in China invent new material to clean up oil spills

Oil is seen on sand as cleaning operation continues at Ao Prao Beach on Koh Samet, Thailand © Reuters / Athit Perawongmetha

Chinese scientists have invented a honeycomb-style polypropylene material that can soak up oil from water more cheaply and efficiently than some popular established methods.
The material according to a press release, is essentially foam with a rough surface and a tubular structure modeled on honeycombs. This structure allows water to flow freely through the tubes while oil gets caught and absorbed in seconds, the researchers from Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology said.

While we don’t see many oil spills of Deepwater Horizon proportions on a regular basis, luckily, the problem of oil-contaminated water is a serious one simply because, as the Chinese scientists note in their research, oil and oil derivatives are used in so many industrial activities that also involve water at some point. The result is oily water that cannot be cleaned by setting it on fire (a common method for waterborne oil cleanup if not very environmentally friendly) or filtering it in another way.

The news from the Chinese institute come soon after another invention in this field: a sorbent material that can absorb oil without also absorbing a lot of water. Called a plasma-polymerized carbonaceous nanosponge and developed by Argentine scientists, the material is a powder that “can be used to selectively and efficiently adsorb hydrocarbons from water, with negligible water uptake.” The material can work on its own or be used as coating for textiles or metal meshes as a barrier between oil and water.

Oil water separation research certainly looks like an exciting field. Some more news in it came from Texas earlier this month. Two young entrepreneurs there developed what they’ve called Towelie: a cheap fabric that can hold up to 15 times its weight in oil. The towel-like unwoven material is cheap and it floats without leaving any microplastic residue in the water. What’s more, it’s made from natural cotton fibers. Things don’t get any eco-friendlier than this.
Of course, for all their benefits, these different materials certainly have drawbacks since they were made in an imperfect world.

The Chinese invention, for example, is made from polypropylene, which is an oil—or gas—derivative. This probably contributes significantly to its affordability but does not, strictly speaking, make it completely environmentally friendly in terms of production. Also, plastic-based sorbents leave microplastic residue in the water.

The nanosponge invented by the Argentine scientists can absorb oil for half an hour under UV radiation but then it begins to soak up water as well, which compromises its effectiveness.

The cotton-based Towelie is already used in the Permian for minor leaks at wellheads and as a replacement for synthetic towels widely used in the oil production industry. Yet it doesn’t seem like the best idea for a major offshore spill: a major spill would require thousands of Towelies that would then have to be collected and the oil disposed of.

All in all, however, it’s good to know there is an ongoing effort to make potential oil spills and leaks less devastating and clean them up more quickly with less water getting wasted in the process.

This article was originally published on Oilprice.com

 

[JSCh]

China's first heavy-ion medical accelerator ready for clinical trials
By Shan Juan (chinadaily.com.cn) Updated: 2016-04-26 11:12

The heavy-ion medical accelerator in Gansu. [Photo/IC]​

An advanced piece of medical equipment that is used in cutting-edge cancer treatments has been developed in China, making it the fourth country in the world to possess such technology.

The heavy-ion medical accelerator generates particles for a type of radiotherapy that aims to cure malignant tumors by bombarding them with high-energy charged heavy-ion beams.

Currently, only Japan, Germany and the United States have the capacity to produce such medical accelerators.

Developed by the Modern Physics Institute of the Chinese Academy of Science and a subsidiary company in northwest Gansu province, the new accelerator is now undergoing quality assessment tests and will have to pass a clinical trial before it is approved by the drug authority, according to Xiao Guoqing, the institute director.

"It's a great milestone as it marks an end of China's long term dependence on imported large-scale radiotherapy equipment," he said.

According to Xiao, the accelerator is the result of six decades of related research, with development on the technology itself starting in 2012.

About 30 patients will be recruited in Gansu for the clinical trials and "if everything runs smoothly it's expected to formally receive patients by the end of the year," said Ye Yancheng, head of the Wuwei Cancer Hospital, which is one of three hospitals conducting the trials.

The public hospital in Wuwei, a small city about three hours' drive from Lanzhou, bought the first machine under a joint development and technology transfer contract with the developer for a price of 550 million yuan ($84 million). Local governments and several other private companies have also contributed to the investment.

A 1,600-bed subsidiary hospital called Gansu Heavy Ion Cancer Center is now under construction, where the accelerator will be placed and receive at least 2,000 patients each year, Ye said.

"Cancer patients from abroad are welcome as well," he said.

China-developed heavy ion cancer treatment system to be operational
Source: Xinhua| 2019-07-06 00:14:04|Editor: Wu Qin

LANZHOU, July 5 (Xinhua) -- A heavy ion cancer treatment system developed by Chinese researchers will soon be put into operation in northwest China's Gansu Province, researchers said.

The system will be used in a hospital in Lanzhou, capital of Gansu, which is mainly dedicated to treating cancer patients with the technology of heavy-ion accelerators.

Cancer radiation treatments employing heavy-ion accelerators can bombard a target with high-energy electrons to kill cancer cells.

Compared to traditional therapy such as radiation, heavy ion treatment is considered to have more balanced properties with less radiation on healthy cells. The treatment period is shorter and the therapy could more effectively control cancer cells, according to Wang Xiaohu, deputy director of the Gansu Provincial Cancer Hospital.

Researchers with the Institute of Modern Physics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences started basic research into the technology in 1993 and developed the accelerators in 2015.

A report published by the National Cancer Center in 2017 showed that China has nearly 25 percent of the world's new cancer cases, with 10,000 cancer patients added per day. Every year, there are two million cancer-induced deaths. Lung, breast and stomach cancers are the most common types.

 

[JSCh]

China to build world's most powerful hyper-gravity centrifuges
Source: Xinhua| 2018-01-31 18:46:18|Editor: Mengjie



HANGZHOU, Jan. 31 (Xinhua) -- China plans to build two centrifuges for hyper-gravity experiments that, when completed, will become the world's largest by capacity, scientists said Wednesday.

The centrifuges are designed to each have a capacity of at least 1,500 gravity tons (gt), compared with the 1,200-gt centrifuge developed by U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the world's most powerful to date.

The project is expected to be completed in five years, with funding of more than 2 billion yuan (about 303 million U.S. dollars).

The project, planned to be located in China's eastern city of Hangzhou, will be spearheaded by Chen Yunmin, an engineering professor with Zhejiang University. He is also an academician at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, one of China's top think tanks.

One of the planned centrifuges will give researchers access to a range of hyper-gravity up to 1,500 times of Earth gravity and the other up to 600 times.

The development of the new machines will be based on a two-arm, 9-meter-diameter centrifuge that has been in operation at Zhejiang University.

Along with the two hyper-gravity centrifuges, Chen's team will also develop six hyper-gravity labs and other supporting equipment.

Chen said he aims to develop the facility into a multifunctional platform for interdisciplinary hyper-gravity experiments.

"The centrifuges will provide strong support to research in areas such as underground and deep-sea exploration, disaster control, waste disposal, and new material manufacturing," said Chen.

Hyper-gravity will enable scientists to simulate a deep-sea environment thousands of meters below the sea level, in which they can easily test the mining of natural gas hydrate, or combustible ice, Chen said.

Preliminary design of CHIEF approved
2019-07-05 Global Communications

Recently, the preliminary design of Centrifugal Hyper-gravity and Interdisciplinary Experiment Facility (CHIEF) obtained the approval of the Ministry of Education and Zhejiang Provincial Government.

Architectural rendering of CHIEF


Zhejiang University is responsible for the construction of CHIEF, the first national key sci-tech infrastructure in Zhejiang Province. Its proposal and its feasibility report received the seal of approval from the National Development and Reform Commission on Jan. 15 and Nov. 27 of 2018 respectively.

With a total investment of more than two billion yuan, CHIEF will be located in Hangzhou Future Sci-tech City, and its construction is expected to be completed within five years. Its main body is comprised of two centrifuges and six hyper-gravity experimental capsules. It will be applied to six different fields, including slopes and high dams, geotechnical and earthquake engineering, deep-sea engineering, deep underground engineering and environment, geological processes and new material manufacturing.

Upon completion, CHIEF will become a comprehensive hyper-gravity and interdisciplinary experiment facility with the largest capacity and the most extensive application worldwide. As an indispensable experiment device, it will provide an advanced experiment platform and offer immense support for the development and verification of major engineering technologies as well as research into cutting-edge matter-related sciences.

 

[JSCh]

JULY 9, 2019 REPORT
A closer look a magnesium shows very small samples are much more ductile than thought
by Bob Yirka , Phys.org

In situ TEM compression test showing that dislocation slip is responsible for the plastic deformation of an Mg single-crystal pillar under c-axis compression. (A) Hexagonal unit cell showing the loading orientation. (B) Stress-strain curve. (C) Snapshots showing an increase in dislocation density during compression. The dark-field TEM observation is conducted under a two-beam condition. Credit: Science (2019). DOI: 10.1126/science.aaw2843

A team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in China and the U.S. has found that very small samples of magnesium are much more ductile than thought. In their paper published in the journal Science, the group describes their study of the metal using an electron microscope and what they found. Gwénaëlle Proust, with the University of Sydney, has published a Perspective piece on the work done by the team in the same journal issue.

As engineers around the world look for ways to make more efficient cars, planes and other vehicles, they are studying new, lighter materials. One such material, magnesium, is interesting because it is just as strong as aluminum, but 35 percent lighter. Up until now, the metal has rarely been used because it is too difficult to process into parts. It is also much less resistant to corrosion. Still, interest in the metal persists—many in the field believe it is only a matter of finding the right elements to mix with it. In this new effort, the researchers report that they have found very small samples of magnesium are more ductile than previously thought.

The reason that magnesium is less amenable to conformity than other bendable metals is because of the way its atoms arrange themselves. Atoms such as aluminum are arranged in a cubic structure, which makes it relatively easy to make desired deformities. Magnesium atoms, in sharp contrast, are arranged in a hexagonal pattern. Prior research has shown that when a metal such as aluminum is deformed at room temperature, atoms are displaced along a line in the crystal allowing for dislocations in multiple ways. With magnesium, the possibilities are more limited. To better understand those limitations, the researchers used electron microscopy mechanical testing techniques on a micron-sized sample of magnesium. The technique allowed them to see exactly what happened while applying sheer forces at the atomic level and at room temperature.

The researchers report that the crystal showed surprising ductility—they were able to force dislocations along two planes, something not seen in larger samples. They plan to keep working with the metal to see if they can find a way to force similar dislocations in larger samples—possibly paving their way for use in real-world applications.


https://phys.org/news/2019-07-closer-magnesium-small-samples-ductile.html

Bo-Yu Liu, Fei Liu, Nan Yang, Xiao-Bo Zhai, Lei Zhang, Yang, Bin Li, Ju Li, Evan Ma, Jian-Feng Nie, Zhi-Wei Shan. Large plasticity in magnesium mediated by pyramidal dislocations. Science (2019). DOI: 10.1126/science.aaw2843​

 

[JSCh]

China-developed heavy ion cancer treatment system to be operational
Source: Xinhua| 2019-07-06 00:14:04|Editor: Wu Qin

LANZHOU, July 5 (Xinhua) -- A heavy ion cancer treatment system developed by Chinese researchers will soon be put into operation in northwest China's Gansu Province, researchers said.

The system will be used in a hospital in Lanzhou, capital of Gansu, which is mainly dedicated to treating cancer patients with the technology of heavy-ion accelerators.

Cancer radiation treatments employing heavy-ion accelerators can bombard a target with high-energy electrons to kill cancer cells.

Compared to traditional therapy such as radiation, heavy ion treatment is considered to have more balanced properties with less radiation on healthy cells. The treatment period is shorter and the therapy could more effectively control cancer cells, according to Wang Xiaohu, deputy director of the Gansu Provincial Cancer Hospital.

Researchers with the Institute of Modern Physics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences started basic research into the technology in 1993 and developed the accelerators in 2015.

A report published by the National Cancer Center in 2017 showed that China has nearly 25 percent of the world's new cancer cases, with 10,000 cancer patients added per day. Every year, there are two million cancer-induced deaths. Lung, breast and stomach cancers are the most common types.

A China-developed heavy ion cancer treatment system has run into the debugging phase in the Lanzhou Heavy Ion Hospital in northwest China's Gansu Province. (Xinhua)

​

 

[JSCh]

'Super microscope' access in high demand
By Zhang Zhihao | China Daily | Updated: 2019-07-11 09:49

The linear accelerator of CSNS in Dongguan, Guangdong province. [Photo/Xinhua]

Facility has attracted dozens of research institutes from mainland, HK and UK

The China Spallation Neutron Source, a "super microscope" facility for studying the structure and movement of materials at the atomic scale, has conducted more than 100 experiments since opening in September.

The results will help scientists in fields ranging from creating better lithium batteries to making stronger steels, said Liang Tianjiao, deputy director of the Dongguan branch of the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of High Energy Physics.

The 2.3 billion yuan ($335 million), 26.67-hectare facility in Dongguan, Guangdong province, has attracted users from dozens of research institutions from the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong and the United Kingdom. Scientists have published nine papers based on the results of experiments at CSNS, with more under review and being prepared for publication, Liang said.

The facility first accelerates protons down a linear accelerator and into a rapid cycling synchrotron - a circular particle accelerator - which further speeds up the particles to close to 93 percent of the speed of light while compressing them into "bullet-like" pulses.

The pulses then collide with a tungsten target, creating chips, or "spalls", of neutrons that can be channeled into instruments where scientists can measure their interactions with materials at atomic scale.

Since neutrons carry no charge, they can easily penetrate test samples and only interact with their nucleus. Neutrons are also more sensitive to light elements such as hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen, making them ideal for use in studying intricate materials such as proteins or polymers.

"Thanks to its safety, stability and efficiency, the demand to use CSNS is very high. We can barely keep up with the applications," Liang said.

He said engineers will increase the power of CSNS's proton beam from 50 kilowatts to 80 kW this year and possibly reach the designed power level of 100 kW next year. More power allows researchers to conduct scientific research more quickly on a wider range of materials.

The linear accelerator of CSNS in Dongguan, Guangdong province. [Photo/Xinhua]

CSNS has three neutron instruments in operation, which are used to measure the interactions between neutrons and test samples. Liang said the institute plans to design and build at least 16 new neutron instruments in the future, allowing more users to run more complex experiments.

"The results from the experiments will be invaluable in improving industrial capabilities in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area," he said. "They will also help solve many key scientific challenges that are limiting our industrial and socioeconomic development."

One example of a major application is improving the efficiency of lithium cell batteries.

"We can use the facility to examine how lithium ions move and change during charge and discharge, thus finding new ways to optimize and improve battery design at the atomic level," Liang said.

The ultraprecise results delivered by CSNS are also useful in making stronger steels, new superconducting materials, thin-film solar cells and new medicines.

China is the fourth country - following the UK, the United States and Japan - to master such technology. Switzerland has a different type of spallation neutron source, and European countries are teaming up to build a new facility in Denmark.

In late February, the institute and City University of Hong Kong launched a joint laboratory dedicated to expanding scientific cooperation in fields related to neutron scattering technologies.

They also agreed to build more neutron instruments for applications, train more talent and jointly improve research capabilities, Chen Hesheng, CSNS chief engineering director, said at the launch ceremony.

Liang said CSNS will continue to serve as a platform for global collaboration and allow scientists and companies from around the world to jointly make breakthroughs in basic sciences and industrial applications.

"The community of advanced neutron sources has a historical tradition of cooperation," he said. "If we can put aside our differences and work together, the opportunities for discovery are endless."

 

[JSCh]

NEWS RELEASE 11-JUL-2019
Scientists discover a novel perception mechanism regulating important plant processes
UNIVERSITY OF COLOGNE

An international research team has revealed a novel mechanism for the perception of endogenous peptides by a plant receptor. The discovery of this activation mechanism sets a new paradigm for how plants react to internal and external cues. The study 'Mechanisms of RALF peptide perception by a heterotypic receptor complex' was published today in the journal Nature.

Similar to insulin in humans, plants also produce peptide hormones that orchestrate internal processes and responses, including growth, development, and immunity. One of them is RALF23, which belongs to the large family of RALF plant peptides. Notably, the study revealed a novel recognition mechanism for the RALF23 peptide signals by plant receptors. Since RALF peptides play major roles in multiple important plant processes, these findings will impact our understanding of how several additional important receptors control fundamental plant processes.

Previous work by the group of Professor Dr Cyril Zipfel at The Sainsbury Laboratory (Norwich, UK) and now at the University of Zürich (Zürich, Switzerland) had identified that RALF23 regulates plant innate immunity. Using a combination of genetics, biochemistry and structural biology, a close collaboration between this group and the group of Professor Dr Jijie Chai at the Innovation Center for Structural Biology and the Joint Center for Life Sciences of Tsinghua and Peking Universities (Beijing, China) and at the University of Cologne (Cologne, Germany) has now identified the molecular basis for RALF23 perception. This work further involved collaborators from the Gregor Mendel Institute (Vienna, Austria).

Professor Jijie Chai said: 'We were excited about the results, when we saw that RALF23 needs two distinct types of proteins - a receptor kinase (FERONIA) and an unrelated membrane-associated protein - to be recognized. The way these three proteins form an impressive perception complex might apply to other plant receptors that recognize peptide hormones.'

Professor Cyril Zipfel added: 'FERONIA is a plant receptor that was actually identified at the University of Zürich over a decade ago by my colleague Professor Ueli Grossniklaus for its important role in reproduction, but has since been shown to play key roles in multiple plant processes. Now that we understand the molecular basis of how FERONIA can perceive RALF peptides, it will help characterize how this unique receptor controls several aspects of plants' life.'


Scientists discover a novel perception mechanism regulating important plant processes | EurekAlert! Science News

Yu Xiao, Martin Stegmann, Zhifu Han, Thomas A. DeFalco, Katarzyna Parys, Li Xu, Youssef Belkhadir, Cyril Zipfel, Jijie Chai. Mechanisms of RALF peptide perception by a heterotypic receptor complex. Nature, 2019; DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1409-7​

 

[JSCh]

Chinese scientists help villagers fight poverty
Source: Xinhua| 2019-07-16 22:47:32|Editor: yan

BEIJING, July 16 (Xinhua) -- Experts with the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) are helping poverty-stricken areas with targeted and precise relief solutions.

A total of 103 experts with the CAS conducted a three-month survey in four counties before giving tailored suggestions for them to fight poverty with a view to local conditions and demands, according to a CAS Press conference Tuesday.

"Only when we find the right prescription can we cure the grinding poverty," said Yan Qing, an official with the CAS.

Kiwi fruit is on the prescription for Shuicheng, a county of Guizhou Province in southwest China.

"Kiwi fruit can adapt to a variety of environmental conditions, covering more than half of China's poor areas," said Zhong Caihong, a researcher of Wuhan Botanical Garden, CAS. "Seedless kiwis with edible peels will go from poor villages to the world. "

With the help of scientists and experts, fruits, herbs, grains and other local resources have become the weapon to fight poverty.

China aims to eradicate poverty by 2020, the target year to finish building a moderately prosperous society in all respects.

By the end of June 2019, more than 101,000 people had been lifted out of poverty in the counties assisted by the CAS.

 

[JSCh]

Chinese researchers create safe gene-editing tech that avoids ethical concerns
By Leng Shumei Source:Global Times Published: 2019/7/17 20:48:40

Monkeys cloned from a gene-edited macaque with circadian rhythm disorders are seen at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shanghai in this handout picture provided by the Institute of Neuroscience of the Chinese Academy of Sciences on January 24, 2019. Photo: VCG

Chinese researchers created a safe and efficient technology to edit RNA, which could largely avoid side effects and ethical concerns from previous gene-editing technologies.

The achievement was released on Nature Biotechnology magazine on Monday, more than half a year after Chinese scientist He Jiankui claimed that he had created the world's first gene-edited twins immune to HIV, causing a global ethics whirlwind of condemnation and scorn.

The technology He applied is called CRISPR-Cas9, which was adapted from a naturally occurring genome editing system in bacteria. Cas9 enzyme - a protein which plays a vital role in the immunological defense of certain bacteria against DNA viruses - would be introduced into the human body to cut the viruses' DNA.

Such technology relies on the delivery of exogenous proteins or chemically modified guide RNAs, which may lead to aberrant effector activity, delivery barrier or immunogenicity, Wei Wensheng, a Peking University biologist and leading researcher of the latest technology, told the Global Times on Wednesday.

On the contrary, the latest technology, called leveraging endogenous ADAR for programmable editing of RNA (LEAPER), makes uses of native proteins and does not change DNA directly, thus would not bring about heritable changes and is precise and safe, Zhou Zhuo, another member of the research team, told the Global Times.

LEAPER employs engineered RNAs to recruit native enzymes to change a specific adenosine to inosine, according to the website of Nature Biotechnology.

Cellular-level experiments in the past two years had showed that LEAPER achieved editing efficiencies of up to 80 percent, according to Zhou. He said that the team is now testing LEAPER in rats.

The LEAPER is active in a broad spectrum of cell types, including multiple human primary cell types, and can restore the deficient cells of patients with Hurler syndrome without evoking innate immune responses, the Nature Biotechnology website said.

As a single-molecule system, LEAPER enables precise, efficient RNA editing with broad applicability for therapy and basic research, the website said.

Liang Qu, Zongyi Yi, Shiyou Zhu, Chunhui Wang, Zhongzheng Cao, Zhuo Zhou, Pengfei Yuan, Ying Yu, Feng Tian, Zhiheng Liu, Ying Bao, Yanxia Zhao, Wensheng Wei. Programmable RNA editing by recruiting endogenous ADAR using engineered RNAs. Nature Biotechnology (2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41587-019-0178-z​

 

[JSCh]

NEWS * 17 JULY 2019
World’s most invasive mosquito nearly eradicated from two islands in China
Researchers combined sterilization with a bacterium in an attempt to stamp out the Asian tiger mosquito.

Giorgia Guglielmi

Researchers have all but obliterated populations of the world’s most invasive mosquito species — the Asian tiger mosquito (Aedes albopictus) — on two islands in the Chinese city of Guangzhou.

They reduced A. albopictus populations by up to 94% using a combination of two promising control techniques in a field trial for the first time. The two-pronged approach1, published in Nature on 17 July, integrates the sterilization of female Asian tiger mosquitoes with the infection of males using Wolbachia pipientis, a bacterium that hinders the insects’ ability to reproduce and transmit disease-causing viruses such as dengue and Zika.

This resulted in one of the most successful eradication trials of A. albopictus to date, says Peter Armbruster, a mosquito ecologist at Georgetown University in Washington DC, who wrote a commentary to accompany the study. Used in tandem with other control methods such as pesticides, the dual approach could be a very powerful tool, he says.

Problems with control
Previous studies have shown that X-ray sterilization of large numbers of male pests like screw worms (Cochliomyia hominivorax), followed by their release into target areas, can reduce the size of wild pest populations. But this is an inefficient way to control mosquitoes because even though irradiated males can still mate, they are less successful than their unaltered counterparts.

In an alternative approach, workers infect laboratory mosquitoes with strains of Wolbachia, which is found naturally in several insect species, including A. albopictus. When male mosquitoes infected with a certain combination of Wolbachia strains mate with wild females carrying a different combination, the insects can’t produce offspring.

But it’s crucial that only male mosquitoes infected with that particular combination are released into the wild, says Zhiyong Xi, a medical entomologist at Michigan State University in East Lansing, who led the study. If females with those strains are also released, they could mate and produce offspring with males carrying the same Wolbachiacocktail. Their offspring could eventually replace the local mosquito population, making future control attempts that rely on Wolbachia infection more difficult.

To prevent this from happening, facilities that rear large numbers of mosquitoes for control purposes usually separate males from females mechanically, based on size differences. But this process isn’t perfect, Xi says, so workers have to do a second, manual screening to remove female mosquitoes. It’s a tedious and time-consuming task that limits the total number of mosquitoes that can be released. So Xi and his team set out to eliminate the need for this process.

An issue of scale
Wild populations of A. albopictus are naturally infected with two strains of Wolbachia. The researchers infected wild mosquitoes with a third strain of Wolbachia to produce a laboratory colony of the insects with three bacterial variants. Then, the team exposed the colony to low levels of radiation that sterilized the females but only slightly reduced the males’ ability to mate.

During the mosquitoes’ peak breeding seasons in 2016 and 2017, the researchers released more than 160,000 of these mosquitoes per hectare each week in residential areas on two islands situated in a river in Guangzhou — the city with the highest rate of dengue transmission in China.

Their hope was that this would vastly reduce the mosquito population because wild females that mated with the altered males — and wild males that mated with sterile lab females — wouldn’t produce offspring. The team tracked population declines in adult female mosquitoes, since they’re the ones that bite people and transmit diseases. And as expected, the average numbers of wild adult females fell by 83% in 2016 and by 94% in 2017.

Male Asian tiger mosquitoes carrying three strains of Wolbachia await release into a test site.Credit: Yajun Wang

“That’s very impressive,” says Stephen Dobson, a medical entomologist at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, and the founder of MosquitoMate, a company that commercializes Wolbachia as a tool to control the Asian tiger mosquito.

Current strategies for controlling A. albopictus — including spraying pesticides and removing water-filled containers where the insects lay their eggs — are ineffective, Dobson says. This species lays its eggs in hidden places that can be difficult to monitor and tends to develop resistance to common insecticides, he adds. “A new tool like what’s being described in this paper is very much needed,” he says.

But scaling up the technique into an effective public-health strategy for large regions is the challenge, says Gordana Rašić, a molecular ecologist at the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute in Brisbane, Australia.

Rašić says that Wolbachia-based approaches are promising strategies, and she’s hopeful that developing and testing such tools will help to reduce the incidence of mosquito-borne diseases. “We’re living in very exciting times for mosquito control,” she says.

doi: 10.1038/d41586-019-02160-z
See the related News & Views ‘A trial to tackle tiger mosquitoes’.


World’s most invasive mosquito nearly eradicated from two islands in China | Nature

Xiaoying Zheng, Dongjing Zhang, Yongjun Li, Cui Yang, Yu Wu, Xiao Liang, Yongkang Liang, Xiaoling Pan, Linchao Hu, Qiang Sun, Xiaohua Wang, Yingyang Wei, Jian Zhu, Wei Qian, Ziqiang Yan, Andrew G. Parker, Jeremie R. L. Gilles, Kostas Bourtzis, Jérémy Bouyer, Moxun Tang, Bo Zheng, Jianshe Yu, Julian Liu, Jiajia Zhuang, Zhigang Hu, Meichun Zhang, Jun-Tao Gong, Xiao-Yue Hong, Zhoubing Zhang, Lifeng Lin, Qiyong Liu, Zhiyong Hu, Zhongdao Wu, Luke Anthony Baton, Ary A. Hoffmann & Zhiyong Xi. Incompatible and sterile insect techniques combined eliminate mosquitoes. Nature, July 2019. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1407-9​

 

[JSCh]

New Laws of Attraction: Scientists Print Magnetic Liquid Droplets | Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Revolutionary material could lead to 3D-printable magnetic liquid devices for the fabrication of flexible electronics, or artificial cells that deliver targeted drug therapies to diseased cells

News Release Theresa Duque 510-495-2418 • July 18, 2019

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Scientists at Berkeley Lab have made a new material that is both liquid and magnetic, opening the door to a new area of science in magnetic soft matter. Their findings could lead to a revolutionary class of printable liquid devices for a variety of applications from artificial cells that deliver targeted cancer therapies to flexible liquid robots that can change their shape to adapt to their surroundings. (Video credit: Marilyn Chung/Berkeley Lab; footage of droplets courtesy of Xubo Liu and Tom Russell/Berkeley Lab)

Inventors of centuries past and scientists of today have found ingenious ways to make our lives better with magnets – from the magnetic needle on a compass to magnetic data storage devices and even MRI body scan machines.

All of these technologies rely on magnets made from solid materials. But what if you could make a magnetic device out of liquids? Using a modified 3D printer, a team of scientists at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have done just that. Their findings, to be published July 19 in the journal Science, could lead to a revolutionary class of printable liquid devices for a variety of applications – from artificial cells that deliver targeted cancer therapies to flexible liquid robots that can change their shape to adapt to their surroundings.

“We’ve made a new material that is both liquid and magnetic. No one has ever observed this before,” said Tom Russell, a visiting faculty scientist at Berkeley Lab and professor of polymer science and engineering at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, who led the study. “This opens the door to a new area of science in magnetic soft matter.”

For the past seven years, Russell, who leads a program called Adaptive Interfacial Assemblies Towards Structuring Liquids in Berkeley Lab’s Materials Sciences Division and also led the current study, has focused on developing a new class of materials – 3D-printable all-liquid structures.

Array of 1 millimeter magnetic droplets: Fluorescent green droplets are paramagnetic without any jammed nanoparticles at the liquid interface; red are paramagnetic with nonmagnetic nanoparticles jammed at the interface; brown droplets are ferromagnetic with magnetic nanoparticles jammed at the interface. (Credit: Xubo Liu et al./Berkeley Lab)

Russell and Xubo Liu, the study’s lead author, came up with the idea of forming liquid structures from ferrofluids, which are solutions of iron-oxide particles that become strongly magnetic in the presence of another magnet. “We wondered, ‘If a ferrofluid can become temporarily magnetic, what could we do to make it permanently magnetic, and behave like a solid magnet but still look and feel like a liquid?’” said Russell.

Jam sessions: making magnets out of liquids
To find out, Russell and Liu used a 3D-printing technique they had developed with former postdoctoral researcher Joe Forth in Berkeley Lab’s Materials Sciences Division to print 1 millimeter droplets from a ferrofluid solution containing iron-oxide nanoparticles just 20 nanometers in diameter (the average size of an antibody protein).

Using surface chemistry and sophisticated atomic force microscopy techniques, staff scientists Paul Ashby and Brett Helms of Berkeley Lab’s Molecular Foundry revealed that the nanoparticles formed a solid-like shell at the interface between the two liquids through a phenomenon called “interfacial jamming.” This causes the nanoparticles to crowd at the droplet’s surface, “like the walls coming together in a small room jampacked with people,” said Russell.

To make them magnetic, the scientists placed the droplets by a magnetic coil in solution. As expected, the magnetic coil pulled the iron-oxide nanoparticles toward it.

But when they removed the magnetic coil, something quite unexpected happened.

Permanently magnetized iron-oxide nanoparticles gravitate toward each other in perfect unison. (Credit: Xubo Liu et al./Berkeley Lab)

Like synchronized swimmers, the droplets gravitated toward each other in perfect unison, forming an elegant swirl “like little dancing droplets,” said Liu, who is a graduate student researcher in Berkeley Lab’s Materials Sciences Division and a doctoral student at the Beijing University of Chemical Technology.

Somehow, these droplets had become permanently magnetic. “We almost couldn’t believe it,” said Russell. “Before our study, people always assumed that permanent magnets could only be made from solids.”

Measure by measure, it’s still a magnet
All magnets, no matter how big or small, have a north pole and a south pole. Opposite poles are attracted to each other, while the same poles repel each other.

Through magnetometry measurements, the scientists found that when they placed a magnetic field by a droplet, all of the nanoparticles’ north-south poles, from the 70 billion iron-oxide nanoparticles floating around in the droplet to the 1 billion nanoparticles on the droplet’s surface, responded in unison, just like a solid magnet.

Key to this finding were the iron-oxide nanoparticles jamming tightly together at the droplet’s surface. With just 8 nanometers between each of the billion nanoparticles, together they created a solid surface around each liquid droplet.

Somehow, when the jammed nanoparticles on the surface are magnetized, they transfer this magnetic orientation to the particles swimming around in the core, and the entire droplet becomes permanently magnetic – just like a solid, Russell and Liu explained.

The researchers also found that the droplet’s magnetic properties were preserved even if they divided a droplet into smaller, thinner droplets about the size of a human hair, added Russell.

To make the iron-oxide nanoparticles permanently magnetic, the scientists placed the droplets by a magnetic coil in solution. As expected, the magnetic coil pulled the iron-oxide nanoparticles toward it. (Credit: Xubo Liu et al./Berkeley Lab

Among the magnetic droplets’ many amazing qualities, what stands out even more, Russell noted, is that they change shape to adapt to their surroundings. They morph from a sphere to a cylinder to a pancake, or a tube as thin as a strand of hair, or even to the shape of an octopus – all without losing their magnetic properties.

The droplets can also be tuned to switch between a magnetic mode and a nonmagnetic mode. And when their magnetic mode is switched on, their movements can be remotely controlled as directed by an external magnet, Russell added.

Liu and Russell plan to continue research at Berkeley Lab and other national labs to develop even more complex 3D-printed magnetic liquid structures, such as a liquid-printed artificial cell, or miniature robotics that move like a tiny propeller for noninvasive yet targeted delivery of drug therapies to diseased cells.

“What began as a curious observation ended up opening a new area of science,” said Liu. “It’s something all young researchers dream of, and I was lucky to have the chance to work with a great group of scientists supported by Berkeley Lab’s world-class user facilities to make it a reality,” said Liu.

Also contributing to the study were researchers from UC Santa Cruz, UC Berkeley, the WPI–Advanced Institute for Materials Research (WPI-AIMR) at Tohoku University, and Beijing University of Chemical Technology.

The magnetometry measurements were taken with assistance from Berkeley Lab Materials Sciences Division co-authors Peter Fischer, senior staff scientist; Frances Hellman, senior faculty scientist and professor of physics at UC Berkeley; Robert Streubel, postdoctoral fellow; Noah Kent, graduate student researcher and doctoral student at UC Santa Cruz; and Alejandro Ceballos, Berkeley Lab graduate student researcher and doctoral student at UC Berkeley.

Other co-authors are staff scientists Paul Ashby and Brett Helms, and postdoctoral researchers Yu Chai and Paul Kim, with Berkeley Lab’s Molecular Foundry; Yufeng Jiang, graduate student researcher in Berkeley Lab’s Materials Sciences Division; and Shaowei Shi and Dong Wang of Beijing University of Chemical Technology.

This work was supported by the DOE Office of Science and included research at the Molecular Foundry, a DOE Office of Science User Facility that specializes in nanoscale science.