China Science & Technology Forum

[JSCh]

China Exclusive: Research finds cattle hearts used in ancient cosmetics
Source: Xinhua 2016-01-28 22:07:37

BEIJING, Jan. 28 (Xinhua) -- Thousands of years before the glitz and glamour of modern fashion, ancient residents in today's Xinjiang were already taking cosmetics to heart.

Chinese scientists have discovered two "cosmetic sticks" unearthed from Xiaohe Cemetery in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region that were made from the hearts of cattle, the first time such organs have been found to serve as cosmetic tools.

Dating back about 3,600 years ago, the irregularly-shaped red "sticks" were found in leather bags laid beside female mummies. The bodies were placed in boat-shaped wooden coffins and buried with objects such as wooden combs and wooden phallus, believed to be symbols of fertility worship, according to an article published in the journal Scientific Reports.

A team led by Yang Yimin with the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences employed proteomics analysis and found the objects' proteins were derived from bovine hearts. Using SR micro CT and Raman spectrum, they found a layer of hematite powders, which served as red pigment, on the dehydrated hearts.

"The red paint found on faces of the female mummies leads us to presume the tools were, first of all, used in make-up," Yang told Xinhua on Thursday, while not ruling out the possibility of the hearts being used to paint other objects.

Heart muscles contain fat and collagen, which can serve as a natural adhesives to attach the pigments to paint. Yang also believed the use of cattle heart might carry religious connotations.

Red paints were commonly found inside Xiaohe tombs, from red lines on the mummies' foreheads to painting on the huge pillars worshipping fertility in front of each coffin. That the sticks were mostly buried beside female mummies implied that women played a special role in the religious ritual of painting in red, researchers said.

The study has provided clues to understanding the role of cattle in the Xiaohe Culture, which existed about 4,000 years ago, and the history of early cosmetics, according to Yang.

The Xiaohe Cemetery, located in the Taklamakan Desert, is best known for its many mummies in ship-shaped coffins. Archaeologists say the dry and hot environment helped preserve a large number of organic relics.

The site has seen a number of amazing discoveries, including a skull with a hole indicating brain surgery and China's oldest adhesive made from cattle gelatine, found on a ritual staff and also identified by Yang's team.

 

[JSCh]

Heavy fermions get nuclear boost on way to superconductivity
Jade Boyd – January 28, 2016

Study finds surprise link between nuclear spins, unconventional superconductivity

This microscopic closeup shows a small sample of ytterbium dirhodium disilicide, one of the most-studied "heavy fermion" composites. The scale bar in the center of the screen is one millimeter wide. (Photo courtesy of Marc Tippmann/Technical University of Munich)
​

In a surprising find, physicists from the United States, Germany and China have discovered that nuclear effects help bring about superconductivity in ytterbium dirhodium disilicide (YRS), one of the most-studied materials in a class of quantum critical compounds known as “heavy fermions.”

The discovery, which is described in this week’s issue of Science, marks the first time that superconductivity has been observed in YRS, a composite material that physicists have studied for more than a decade in an effort to probe the quantum effects believed to underlie high-temperature superconductivity.

Rice University physicist and study co-author Qimiao Si said the research provides further evidence that unconventional superconductivity arises from “quantum criticality.”

Source: Rice University
http://news.rice.edu/2016/01/28/heavy-fermions-get-nuclear-boost-on-way-to-superconductivity-2/
Read more-> http://news.rice.edu/2016/01/28/heavy-fermions-get-nuclear-boost-on-way-to-superconductivity-2/

 

[JSCh]

Were cats domesticated more than once?
By David Grimm, Jan. 26, 2016

The rise of cats may have been inevitable. That’s one intriguing interpretation of a new study, which finds that early Chinese farmers may have domesticated wild felines known as leopard cats more than 5000 years ago. If true, this would indicate that cats were domesticated more than once—in China, and 5000 years earlier in the Middle East. It would also suggest that the rise of farming was destined to give rise to the house cat.

“This is very important work that should have a great impact,” says Fiona Marshall, a zooarchaeologist at Washington University in St. Louis in Missouri. Cats, she notes, largely domesticated themselves, and if this happened twice it could indicate that a whole host of animals—from donkeys to sheep—may have become domesticated with less human involvement than previously thought. “This is the leading edge in a shift in thinking about domestication processes.”

Marshall was not involved in the new study, but a few years ago she helped analyze eight cat bones unearthed from Quanhucun, an early millet farming village in central China. The bones—including a pelvis and mandible—dated to about 5300 years ago, and had been dug from the site in 2001. All contained forms of carbon and nitrogen that indicated that the felines ate small animals, which in turn had eaten grain. This supported a longstanding hypothesis about how cats became domesticated: Wild cats slunk into ancient farming villages to hunt rats and mice, and humans kept them around to combat these crop-destroying rodents. Indeed, one of the Quanhucun cats, based on the wear of its teeth, appeared to be an older individual, perhaps suggesting that people had taken care of it.

But a big question remained. Were the Quanhucun cats related to Near Eastern wildcats (Felis silvestris lybica), the ancestors of today’s house cat and the first cats to be domesticated about 10,000 years ago in the Middle East? Or were they a different species of feline, perhaps one of the small local wildcats such as the Central Asian wildcat (Felis silvestris ornata) or the leopard cat (Prionailurus bengalensis)? If the former, the cats likely came to Chinese farming villages via ancient trade routes and were already domesticated. If the latter, Chinese villagers may have embarked on a completely separate domestication of the cat from a local species.

And that’s indeed what the new study suggests. Scientists led by Jean-Denis Vigne, the director of research at the French National Centre for Scientific Research in Paris, performed additional analysis on the Quanhucun bones, as well as bones from two other ancient Chinese farming sites. They focused specifically on the mandibles, using a technique called geometric morphometrics, which employs a computer to take thousands of measurements of the size and shape of bones to determine what species they belong to. All of the bones unequivocally belonged to leopard cats, not a Near Eastern species, the team concludes this month in PLOS ONE.

Read more-> Were cats domesticated more than once? | Science | AAAS

 

[JSCh]

You’ll Never Be-Leaf What Makes up This Battery
January 28, 2016

Scientists at the University of Maryland have a new recipe for batteries: Bake a leaf, and add sodium. They used a carbonized oak leaf, pumped full of sodium, as a demonstration battery’s negative terminal, or anode, according to a paper published yesterday in the journal ACS Applied Materials Interfaces.

"Leaves are so abundant. All we had to do was pick one up off the ground here on campus," said Hongbian Li, a visiting professor at the University of Maryland’s department of materials science and engineering and one of the main authors of the paper. Li is a member of the faculty at the National Center for Nanoscience and Technology in Beijing, China.

Other studies have shown that melon skin, banana peels and peat moss can be used in this way, but a leaf needs less preparation.

The scientists are trying to make a battery using sodium where most rechargeable batteries sold today use lithium. Sodium would hold more charge, but can’t handle as many charge-and-discharge cycles as lithium can.

One of the roadblocks has been finding an anode material that is compatible with sodium, which is slightly larger than lithium. Some scientists have explored graphene, dotted with various materials to attract and retain the sodium, but these are time consuming and expensive to produce. In this case, they simply heated the leaf for an hour at 1,000 degrees C (don’t try this at home) to burn off all but the underlying carbon structure.

The lower side of the maple leaf is studded with pores for the leaf to absorb water. In this new design, the pores absorb the sodium electrolyte. At the top, the layers of carbon that made the leaf tough become sheets of nanostructured carbon to absorb the sodium that carries the charge.

"The natural shape of a leaf already matches a battery’s needs: a low surface area, which decreases defects; a lot of small structures packed closely together, which maximizes space; and internal structures of the right size and shape to be used with sodium electrolyte," said Fei Shen, a visiting student in the department of materials science and engineering and the other main author of the paper.

"We have tried other natural materials, such as wood fiber, to make a battery," said Liangbing Hu, an assistant professor of materials science and engineering. "A leaf is designed by nature to store energy for later use, and using leaves in this way could make large-scale storage environmentally friendly."

The next step, Hu said, is "to investigate different types of leaves to find the best thickness, structure and flexibility" for electrical energy storage. The researchers have no plans to commercialize at this time.

The work was supported by the Department of Energy’s Energy Frontier Research Center program, as part of Nanostructures for Electrical Energy Storage.

ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces ,2016, 8 (3), pp 2204–2210

DOI: 10.1021/acsami.5b10875

You’ll Never Be-Leaf What Makes up This Battery | Division of Research | University of Maryland

 

[JSCh]

NSFC - UNEP Project Launched to Boost Food and Water Security in Zambezi Basin
Jan 29, 2016

Zambezi Basin, the largest river basin in southern Africa is a risk zone facing water and food shortages largely due to climate change. To address this problem, a joint project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) was launched in Beijing on 20 January to explore the impact of agricultural development on food security and water vulnerability under climate change in the Basin.

With an area of 1.3 million km2, Zambezi Basin is a potential zone of soybean production. However, the countries in this Basin including Zambia, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi are suffering serious food shortages. The Basin has abundant arable land resources, among which cropped land only accounts for 10%. Less rainfall caused by warm-dry climate change, more evapotranspiration (ET) generated by hydraulic power plants, coupled with poor irrigation systems, impact greatly on the food production in this region.

To clarify the competitive relationship of “food, water and hydropower” under climate change in the basin, the project has built an international research team that covers remote sensing monitoring, crop modeling, climate change, and hydrology fields. The involved partners are the Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth (RADI) under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) International Ecosystem Management Partnership (UNEP-IEMP), several local universities and meteorological agencies.

The project is co-led by Prof. WU Bingfang from RADI and Dr. LIU Jian from UNEP-IEMP. Prof. WU’s team has long been engaging in agricultural and water resources remote sensing monitoring. His team has developed a CropWatch system and ETWatch system to monitor various indicators related to crop production at regional, national and global scales. They also release CropWatch Bulletins quarterly to assess worldwide crop production, providing valuable references for governments and related organizations to predict food prices and food security.

A network collaborative platform will be built to facilitate the research. The web-based platform will integrate the CropWatch and ETWatch from RADI, a crop modelling system, and weather and hydro database from local metrological agencies, capable of data analysis, crop monitoring, water consumption estimation, modeling and forecasting the crop production, soybean production and export potential under different climate scenarios.

If the research outcomes can facilitate climate compatible agriculture and hydropower planning in this region, the land will unlock great potential for soybean production, which can ensure food security in the Basin, and, in the long run, meet rising demands of China for soybean importation.

(Editor: CHEN Na)​

NSFC - UNEP Project Launched to Boost Food and Water Security in Zambezi Basin---Chinese Academy of Sciences

 

[JSCh]

New tech turns potato effluent into fertilizer
Source: Xinhua 2016-02-01 17:22:22

LANZHOU, Feb. 1 (Xinhua) -- Scientists in China have developed a way of making fertilizer from waste water discharged by potato processing plants, solving a pollution problem which has held back China's potato ambitions.

China sees potatoes as a new staple food to ensure food security, but protein-rich water discharged by starch processors, a major buyer of the spuds, has been blamed for polluting rivers and lakes.

"For years, there has been no technical solution to this problem, forcing environmental authorities to close more than 10,000 small plants, which has hurt the potato market and farmers," said Liu Gang, researcher with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou institute of chemical physics.

Liu's team has developed technology that can halve the chemical oxygen demand (COD) of the effluent by removing starch, fiber and protein. The processed water does not need to be dumped either, because of its high nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus content make it a perfect irrigation water.

LA four-year test has shown the water harmless to crops, and three starch companies are now using the technology to purify their discharge.

China is the world's largest potato producer, with 5.6 million hectares under the crops. Given its resistance to cold and drought, the tubers are more suitable for cultivation in China's arid west and northwest than wheat and rice.

The Ministry of Agriculture has plans to expand potato acreage to 10 million hectares to produce 50 million tonnes by 2020.

Chinese companies have developed buns, noodles and other products made from potato starch, products that are more familiar to the Chinese as staple food.

 

[cirr]

HiSilicon ramps orders to Taiwan foundry, backend service companies, says report

EDN, February 1; Steve Shen, DIGITIMES [Monday 1 February 2016]

China-based chipset vendor HiSilicon Technologies has increased wafer and IC packaging/testing orders at Taiwan-based foundry and backend service companies as it plans to ramp output of chips for its parent company, Huawei, according to a Chinese-language Economic Daily News (EDN) report.

Huawei aims to ramp up its smartphone shipments from 108 million units shipped in 2015 to 130 million units in 2016, with 70% of chipsets used to be supplied by its subsidiary, HiSilicon, said the report. In other words, HiSilicon will have to supply over 90 million chips to Huawei in 2016.

As a result, HiSilicon has increased its foundry orders at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) for the first quarter of 2016, said the paper, noting that HiSilicon is TSMC's first client for its 16nm FinFET process node.

Meanwhile, HiSilicon has also placed more IC packaging orders with Siliconware Precision Industries (SPIL) as well as testing orders with King Yuan Electronics (KYEC), added the paper.

 

[JSCh]

China plans to build new national laboratories
Source: Xinhua 2016-02-03 13:50:50

BEIJING, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese government is planning to build a batch of comprehensive national laboratories, according to Bai Chunli, President of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

Bai said this at the opening ceremony of the International Seminar on National Laboratory Management on Tuesday. It was attended by thirteen national lab directors from China and seven other countries, including the U.S., Germany, the U.K., Sweden, Italy, Japan and Singapore. They exchanged experiences of building and managing national laboratories.

In his speech, Bai said it is one of Chinese government' s priorities to build national laboratories into a cornucopia of the best talents from home and abroad. In recent years, the Chinese government has made a series of policies about the scientific and technological system reform, so as to implement the innovation-driven development strategy.

According to Ding Hong, one of the speakers and Chief Scientist of Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics of CAS, part of the plan features the building of three scientific facilities and five interdisciplinary research platforms. The three scientific facilities are Synergetic Extreme Condition User Facilities, Beijing Advanced Photon Source and Earth System Simulator, and the five platforms focus on accelerator technology, clean energy, materials genome, environment science and brain science.

"It is very important to build several comprehensive national laboratories." Ding said, "compared to laboratories of a single discipline, comprehensive national laboratories can undertake more large-scale scientific projects and interdisciplinary research projects, for example new energy, materials genome and brain science."

As a national research institute, CAS boasts more than 65,000 researchers and 80 percent of the country' s large-scale scientific facilities, including the world' s biggest radio telescope and Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility.

 

[TaiShang]

Inseparable: Taiwan semiconductor giant to build factory in Nanjing
Xinhua, February 3, 2016

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), the world's leading semiconductor maker, said Wednesday that its application to set up a wafer plant in the mainland had been approved by Taiwan authorities. [File photo]


Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), the world's leading semiconductor maker, said Wednesday that its application to set up a wafer plant in the mainland had been approved by Taiwan authorities.

The company will invest US$3 billion in Nanjing, capital of eastern China's Jiangsu Province.

One third of the funds will come from the parent company in Taiwan, while the remainder will be provided in the form of loans from TSMC's subsidiaries around the world.

The new plant will have an annual capacity of 240,000 twelve-inch wafers with production planned to begin in the latter half of 2018.

TSMC expects its global market share to rise from the current 55 percent to 57 percent by 2018.

The company's net profit grew 16.2 percent last year to 307 billion New Taiwan dollars (about US$9.1 billion).

 

[JSCh]

中国新一代“人造太阳”实验装置获重大突破
发表时间：2016-02-04 17:07来源：新华社​

这是全超导托卡马克核聚变实验装置（2015年7月30日摄）。

这是EAST5000万度、102秒等离子体放电实验数据图。​

记者4日从中科院合肥物质科学研究院了解到，该院等离子体所承担的大科学工程“人造太阳”实验装置（EAST）在1月底的实验中，成功实现了电子温度超过 5000万度、持续时间达102秒的超高温长脉冲等离子体放电。这是国际托卡马克实验装置在电子温度达到5000万度时，持续时间最长的等离子体放电。专 家们介绍，这一重大成果展示了EAST作为超导装置在较高参数下开展稳态实验研究的特长和能力，标志着中国在稳态磁约束聚变研究方面继续走在国际前列。新 华社发

Summary:
Xinhua news reported from Chinese Academy of Science, Hefei Institute of Physical Science.

The experimental fusion device - Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) of the Hefei Institude of Plasma Physics has made a breakthrough on 28 Jan, 2016.

The device has successful achieved temperature more than 50 million Kelvin, duration of up to 102 seconds long pulse ultra-high temperature plasma discharge.

EAST物理实验获重大突破

——实现5千万度102秒高温先进偏滤器等离子体运行
2016-02-03 | 作者：龚先祖 王亮 常加峰 邵林明

　　2016年1月28日凌晨零点26分，全超导托卡马克核聚变实验装置EAST成功实现了电子温度超过5千万度、持续时间达102秒的超高温长脉 冲等离子体放电。这是国际托卡马克实验装置上电子温度达到5000万度持续时间最长的等离子体放电，展示了EAST作为超导装置在较高参数下开展稳态实验 研究的特长和能力，这一里程碑性的成果标志着我国在稳态磁约束聚变研究方面继续走在国际前列。

　　超高温长脉冲等离子体放电是未来聚变堆的基本运行模式。目前，国际上大部分磁约束聚变实验装置为常规非超导托卡马克且偏滤器位形等离子体持续时 间基本都在20秒以下，只有欧盟和日本科学家曾获得最长为60秒的高参数偏滤器等离子体。EAST既定科学目标是实现1亿度1000秒的等离子体运行，但 实现该科学目标目前仍面临着众多科学和技术（物理和工程）的挑战。本轮实验以来，EAST团队的工程技术人员和科学家们夜以继日，解决了一系列关键科学和 工程技术问题：长脉冲等离子体磁位形的精确控制、全超导磁体安全运行技术、稳态有效的等离子体加热与电流驱动、长时间的等离子体与壁强烈相互作用下粒子和 热排出、实时的高时空分辨的先进物理诊断等。通过集成创新和开展全面的实验研究，利用低杂波与电子回旋波协同加热和电流驱动，在中性束共同加热 下，EAST成功实现了102秒、等离子体电流0.4MA、芯部电子温度超过5千万度、中心电子密度2.4x1019m-3的高温等离子体放电。

　　近年来，在国家发改委、科技部、国家自然科学基金委、中国科学院以及安徽省和合肥市等各部门的大力支持下，EAST的实验运行能力得到大幅提 升。EAST团队的科学工作者们秉承“甘于奉献、团结协作、锐意进取、争创一流”的大科学文化团队精神，全面深入地开展国内国际合作吸收国内外先进科学知 识和技术，EAST已成为国际上稳态磁约束聚变研究的重要实验平台，其研究成果将为未来国际热核聚变实验堆ITER实现稳态高约束放电提供科学和工程实验 支持，并将继续为我国下一代聚变装置中国聚变工程实验堆前期预研奠定重要的科学基础。

 

[JSCh]

New technique leads to creation of elastic high-strength carbon nanotube film
February 4, 2016 by Bob Yirka report

(Phys.org)—A new technique developed by researchers at East China University of Science and Technology and Shanghai Jiao Tong University has led to the development of a high-strength carbon nanotube film that retains much of the elasticity of native carbon nanotubes. In their paper published in the journal Nano Letters, the team describes their technique and the characteristics of the materials they made.

Ever since researchers discovered that creating sheets made of single layers of carbon atoms grown in a tub shape resulted in a material with exceptional electronic and elastic properties, the search has been on to find a way to produce a material made of them in bulk, in a way that does not cause them to lose some of their exceptional properties. In this new effort the combined team in China has developed a method that allows for creating such a material while retaining most of its elastic and other properties. The result is a material that looks like a thick black plastic trash bag. But looks can be deceiving, the material has been found to be significantly stronger than both Kevlar and carbon fiber.

Prior attempts to make such a material have left a lot to be desired because they failed to keep the nanotubes aligned in the final product. The new approach overcomes that problem by using nitrogen gas to push single layers of carbon nanotubes along a tube surface inside of a 2,100 degree oven. As the material is removed from the oven, it is wound around a drum and then compressed further by running it through rollers. The result is a material that the team tested at a tensile strength of 9.6 gigapascals, which is approximately five times as strong as any other material made of carbon nanotubes. In contrast, carbon fibers have been tested to 7 gigapascals and Kevlar to just 3.7. As if that were not enough, the material was also shown able to elongate approximately 8 percent, which is far more than the 2 percent for carbon fibers.

The team believes the new material would be suitable for use in wearable devices and possibly in artificial muscles and perhaps as a component in protective clothing for soldiers or athletes.

More information: Wei Xu et al. High-Strength Carbon Nanotube Film from Improving Alignment and Densification, Nano Letters (2016). DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.5b03863

Abstract
A new method is reported for preparing carbon nanotube (CNT) films. This method involves the continuous production of a hollow cylindrical CNT assembly and its condensation on a winding drum. The alignment and densification of CNTs in the film are improved by controlling the winding rate and imposition of mechanical rolling, respectively. The prepared film has a strength of 9.6 GPa, which is well above those for all other man-made films and fibers.

Journal reference: Nano Letters

© 2016 Phys.org

 

[JSCh]

Chinese researchers creates material that remembers
2016-02-05 10:44 CCTV Editor: Feng Shuang

Chinese scientists have developed a material that remembers. Actually the polymer with built-in memory can morph into different shapes when heated.

Check out this new plastic polymer created by Chinese researchers. It's designed to have shape memory, which means that it can change shapes when exposed to heat.

The scientists at Zhejiang University say it could lead to a new generation of materials driving innovations in medicine, electronics and other fields.

The approach is being called '4D printing,' as the material's properties shift based on the environment and conditions.

"Ordinary ductile materials cannot be folded at high temperatures, because they will flow and the whole system will be plasticised and melt into liquid. Our material, you can see that it's still solid at high temperatures, even though permanent deformation occurs. So we are showing the material's performance by folding it," said Zhao Qian, associate professor of Zhejiang University.

The team demonstrates using a small sheet of polymer programmed with a sequence of pre-determined shapes. It shifts repeatedly as the water temperature reaches 140 degrees Fahrenheit or 60 degrees Celsius.

And what's really cool -- the shapes look like origami.

"Our material is currently a proof of concept. In terms of its permanent shaping, it is only a paper crane, similar to a toy at the moment. But we want to promote it for practical applications that have more value, like heart stents or transformable weapons," said Zou Weike, doctoral student of Zhejiang University.

The researchers' findings have been published in the journal Science Advances. They hope that by building on this technology, it will lead to incredible developments in shape shifting tools or flexible medical sensors that can adjust to body temperatures.

Video from reuters:

 

[JSCh]

Study: China’s new policies will lower CO2 emissions faster, without preventing economic growth
MIT professor sees coal use peaking within next decade and emissions dropping soon after.

• Peter Dizikes | MIT News Office
• February 9, 2016

A new study co-authored by an MIT professor shows that China’s new efforts to price carbon could lower the country’s carbon dioxide emissions significantly without impeding economic development over the next three decades.

Based on a unique model that links China’s energy system and economy, the study finds that China’s coal use, a major source of global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, should peak some time around the year 2020, while the country’s overall CO2 emissions would peak around 2030, or perhaps sooner. Even so, the reduction in carbon-intensive economic activity would not prevent China from reaching its government’s goal of being a “well-off society” by 2050.

“Using carbon pricing in combination with energy price reforms and renewable energy support, China could reach significant levels of emissions reduction without undermining economic growth,” says Valerie Karplus, an assistant professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management and a co-author of the new study.

Details of the study appear in the paper “Carbon emissions in China? How far can new efforts bend the curve?” being published by the journal Energy Economics. In addition to Karplus, the other co-authors are Xiliang Zhang, Tianyu Qi, Da Zhang, and Jiankun He, all scholars at the Institute of Energy, Environment, and Economy, at Tsinghua University in Beijing. Da Zhang is now a postdoc at MIT.

Why spending, not saving, will make China greener

The impetus for the study comes from a headline-making set of recent policy shifts announced by China, including its toughest-ever set of regulations on local environmental pollution. In November 2013, China pledged to create more sustainable economic growth through a series of measures that included creating markets for CO2 emissions as well as other pollutants and scarce resources, such as water, more broadly.

That set of measures also helped form the basis for an agreement to limit carbon use, which the U.S. and China announced in November 2014. Among other things, China committed to a goal of making nonfossil fuel sources account for 20 percent of its energy use by 2030; in 2015, that figure stood at 11 percent. The U.S. pledged to reduce its total CO2 emissions about 26-28 percent by 2025, in comparison to 2005 levels.

In turn, that bilateral agreement has been widely credited with paving the way for the larger set of carbon-reduction pledges agreed to globally at the U.N. Climate Change Conference held in Paris in late 2015.

The study uses a model of China’s economy and energy output, called C-GEM, developed by scholars at the Tsinghua-MIT China Energy and Climate Project. Karplus served as director of that project from 2011-2015. She joined the Sloan faculty in the fall of 2014 as the Class of 1943 Career Development Professor. She is also a faculty affiliate of the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change and the MIT Energy Initiative.

The model compares and contrasts two main paths that China’s energy consumption could take: One, which the paper calls the “Continued Effort” scenario, is a business-as-usual trajectory. The other, based on China’s announced reforms and environmental initiatives, is called the “Accelerated Effort” scenario. In the “Continued Effort” scenario, China’s carbon emissions would not level off until around 2040, ten years later than in the “Accelerated Effort” scenario, and at a level 20 percent higher.

The model outlines some additional broad contours of China’s energy future given the more stringent set of policies. Coal would drop sharply as a source of primary energy, or raw fuel, from around 70 percent in 2010 to around 28 percent in 2050.

“Coal today is used with varying degrees of efficiency across the Chinese energy system,” Karplus observes. “The model is capturing the fact that you have a lot of low-cost opportunities to reduce coal, from heavy-industry direct use as well as the electric power sector, from facilities using less energy-efficient technology or processes.”

In all scenarios, the model also simulates that over time, China’s famously high savings rate will decline, as has been observed in many developing economies. As a result, more of China’s GDP will be composed of consumer-driven spending, not state-led investment, which itself will drive reductions in carbon emissions per unit of GDP.

“The consumption share of GDP has a very different carbon intensity, as a bundle of goods, relative to investment goods, so you automatically get a reduction in carbon intensity from that trajectory,” Karplus says.

Think of it this way: At the moment, a larger portion of household earnings in China are tucked away in banks, where they are loaned out and used to fund massive infrastructure projects — highways, dams, power plants — which release huge amounts of CO2. In the future, if China’s households save less, more of the country’s money will be spent on services and everyday goods, which have a smaller aggregate carbon footprint.

Confidence levels

The MIT-Tsinghua study’s findings have gained the attention of many policymakers in the energy sphere and have been regarded as an important estimate of China’s potential energy and CO2 emissions trajectories.

John P. Weyant, a professor of management science and engineering, director of the Energy Modeling Forum, and deputy director of the Precourt Institute for Energy Efficiency at Stanford University, calls the model “state of the art” and says it “produces policy-relevant insights regarding the implications of the two policy scenarios” in China. He adds that the model contains a “realistic representation of the pathways by which the Chinese and world economy can be expected to adjust to these policy initiatives.”

Karplus readily acknowledges that with any energy and economic modeling of this scale, many uncertainties remain. Still, she thinks it is clear enough that the “Accelerated Effort” scenario for China would produce a significant reduction in China’s emissions.

“You can have some confidence in the relative numbers despite the huge uncertainties, if you look at the two cases,” Karplus asserts. “The value in this exercise is in its ability to look at alternative levels of policy effort and the relative impacts those would have.”

Study: China’s new policies will lower CO2 emissions faster, without preventing economic growth | MIT News

 

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4 February 2016
Robot chameleon changes colour to blend into its surroundings

Take a look at this colourful character: it’s a robot chameleon (see video above).

Guoping Wang of Wuhan University, China, and his colleagues created it to show off their camouflage technology, which could one day allow military vehicles or body armour to blend perfectly into the background.

The chameleon is a 3D-printed model covered in plasmonic displays, which produce colours by exploiting the interactions between nanoscale structures and electric fields. The team made the displays by taking a glass sheet bearing a grid of holes, each 50 nanometres across, and depositing gold on to it. This formed gold domes inside each hole. They then placed the sheet inside a casing filled with an electrolyte gel containing silver ions.

When light hits the gold nanostructures it produces ripples of electrons, called plasmons, that determine its reflective and absorbing properties – in this case, making the glass sheet appear red. Applying an electric field deposits some silver ions on to the gold domes, modifying their properties and producing different colours. Reversing the field strips off these ions and restores the red colour.

The team experimented with different strengths of field and durations to find out which colours they could make. To emulate a chameleon’s skin-changing abilities, they used light sensors to recognise the background colour and apply the appropriate field.

At the moment the sensors are limited to recognising only the primary colours red, green and blue. A more advanced system should be able to detect any colours, says Wang. “This would fully merge the mechanical chameleon into the surroundings.” If these advanced sensors can be miniaturised, the same principle could be used to develop adaptive camouflage systems for use by the military, he says.

ACS Nano, DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.5b07472

By Jacob Aron

Robot chameleon changes colour to blend into its surroundings | New Scientist