China Science & Technology Forum

[Three_Kingdoms]

This is crazy, as recent as 10 years ago, we still had to import these machines from Germany. We are entering the innovation stage now, since there is nothing more to learn.

We are not the manufacturer of the world's largest (diameter-wise) tunnel boring machine yet but our development in this tech is astounding

 

[CCP]

 

[JSCh]

Sichuan observatory may capture cosmic rays, challenge Einstein's theory
(Global Times) 09:49, August 04, 2016

An observatory being built in Sichuan Province aims to capture cosmic rays from outside the solar system and help to explore the evolution of the universe.

Construction began Wednesday on the Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory (LHAASO) in Daocheng county in Southwest China, 4,410 meters above sea level, Cao Zhen, chief scientist of LHAASO and research fellow at the Institute of High Energy Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told the Global Times on Wednesday.

Cosmic rays and their origin play an important role in exploring the universe and its evolution, said Cao, stressing that the rays are man's only way to obtain samples of substances outside the solar system.

He said that cosmic rays contain many messages that electromagnetic waves, a traditional subject in astronomy research, cannot deliver.

"Electromagnetic waves are signals accompanying a series of celestial events. By researching these "signals," man can discover the properties of materials, while cosmic rays deliver the particles to Earth. It's like the difference between observing the moon and getting samples directly from the moon," Cao explained.

"However, the origin of cosmic rays remains one of the physical world's mysteries ever since they were first discovered in 1912," said Cao. LHAASO's goal is to solve this mystery by capturing rarely-obtained cosmic rays, he noted.

"If the gamma ray bursts, the most intense star explosion so far known to man, are captured by LHAASO, Einstein's relativity theory may be challenged," Cao said.

"Despite significant progress in building new detectors and in analysis techniques, the key questions concerning the origin, acceleration and propagation of galactic cosmic rays are still open … The most ambitious and sensitive project between them is LHAASO," said Giuseppe Di Sciascio, an expert at the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, an institution for nuclear, particle and astro-particle physics in Italy, in his paper in 2015. The institution is collaborating with LHAASO.

LHAASO, which the government invested 1.2 billion yuan ($180 million) in, will be completed in two stages. The first stage is expected to be completed within 5 years, while the second stage in 6-7 years, said Cao.

More than 80 scientists from 16 Chinese institutions, including Tsinghua University and Peking University, joined the project, said the official website. Scientists from other countries, including France, Italy and Sweden are also participating in LHAASO, Xinhua reported.

"China's remarkable rise in high-quality research output is now well established, which is why we no longer consider the country a rising star," according to a press release of Nature Index 2016 Rising Stars in assessing research performance.

 

[cirr]

Sichuan observatory may capture cosmic rays, challenge Einstein's theory
(Global Times) 09:49, August 04, 2016

An observatory being built in Sichuan Province aims to capture cosmic rays from outside the solar system and help to explore the evolution of the universe.

Construction began Wednesday on the Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory (LHAASO) in Daocheng county in Southwest China, 4,410 meters above sea level, Cao Zhen, chief scientist of LHAASO and research fellow at the Institute of High Energy Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told the Global Times on Wednesday.

Cosmic rays and their origin play an important role in exploring the universe and its evolution, said Cao, stressing that the rays are man's only way to obtain samples of substances outside the solar system.

He said that cosmic rays contain many messages that electromagnetic waves, a traditional subject in astronomy research, cannot deliver.

"Electromagnetic waves are signals accompanying a series of celestial events. By researching these "signals," man can discover the properties of materials, while cosmic rays deliver the particles to Earth. It's like the difference between observing the moon and getting samples directly from the moon," Cao explained.

"However, the origin of cosmic rays remains one of the physical world's mysteries ever since they were first discovered in 1912," said Cao. LHAASO's goal is to solve this mystery by capturing rarely-obtained cosmic rays, he noted.

"If the gamma ray bursts, the most intense star explosion so far known to man, are captured by LHAASO, Einstein's relativity theory may be challenged," Cao said.

"Despite significant progress in building new detectors and in analysis techniques, the key questions concerning the origin, acceleration and propagation of galactic cosmic rays are still open … The most ambitious and sensitive project between them is LHAASO," said Giuseppe Di Sciascio, an expert at the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, an institution for nuclear, particle and astro-particle physics in Italy, in his paper in 2015. The institution is collaborating with LHAASO.

LHAASO, which the government invested 1.2 billion yuan ($180 million) in, will be completed in two stages. The first stage is expected to be completed within 5 years, while the second stage in 6-7 years, said Cao.

More than 80 scientists from 16 Chinese institutions, including Tsinghua University and Peking University, joined the project, said the official website. Scientists from other countries, including France, Italy and Sweden are also participating in LHAASO, Xinhua reported.

"China's remarkable rise in high-quality research output is now well established, which is why we no longer consider the country a rising star," according to a press release of Nature Index 2016 Rising Stars in assessing research performance.

This is one of the 16 major science and technology infrastructure projects slated for implementation between 2012 and 2030.

 

[JSCh]

China Focus: Chinese researchers to develop 3D skin printing technology
Source: Xinhua 2016-08-04 19:11:12

CHONGQING, Aug. 4 (Xinhua) -- Chinese researchers and companies are developing the technology and processes to make 3D-printed skin a reality, and they expect to achieve this within two to three years.

Wu Jun, director of the Burns Institute at the Southwest Hospital in Chongqing, said he has been testing the process with pig skin.

"In printing skin, the biggest challenge is the 'ink.' We need to find the right material that can be made into a certain form while not damaging its activity," he said. The ink he refers to is the skin tissue, at the current time, 3D printing in the medical industry mostly produces hard items, the flexibility of skin makes this process more difficult.

"I expect the process to be finalized within two to three years," he said.

"Many other researchers are at the same stage as us, so we are moving fast to be the first to make this breakthrough," he said.

The aim is to make custom-made skin for burns patients that will be printed according to their wounds.

3D printing has been used in many operations, but there are still a few more years to go until we can successfully print live tissue or organs, Wu said.

Some researchers across the globe have printed small tissue samples in a lab environment, but the challenge is to keep it alive, functional and fit for clinical use, he said.

There is a 3D printing factory for medical products under construction in Chongqing, said Yang Chen, manager of Hkable Biological 3D (China) Co. Ltd.

The factory, a joint venture between U.S.-based Hkable and Chinese biotechnology company Jintai in Chongqing, is the first 3D medical printing factory in China.

"We will use 3D printers to make splints and artificial limbs in the beginning, then we will develop more advanced stem cell-printed products," Yang said.

Across China, there have been a number of successes using 3D printing for surgical purposes.

In June, doctors in Peking University Third Hospital replaced five vertebrae with 3D-printed replicas in a cancer patient. The 3D-printed vertebrae measured 19 centimeters, the longest ever in a successful operation.

"3D printing is changing medicine," said Dai Kerong, an academic with the Chinese Academy of Engineering.

"Mass-produced joints do not fit every patient, there is a need for custom-made 3D printed joints," he said.

"This is only the beginning, however, we must make sure 3D medical applications are properly supervised," said Dai.

 

[JSCh]

Scientists find possible evidence for legendary flood tied to Chinese civilization
Source: Xinhua | 2016-08-05 05:34:41 | Editor: huaxia

The skeletons in collapsed cave dwelling F4, where three bone samples for radiocarbon dating were collected.(Credit: Cai Linhai)

WASHINGTON, Aug. 4 (Xinhua) -- Scientists have found what could be geological evidence of a legendary flood tied to the establishment of the first dynasty in China, Xia, and even the beginning of Chinese civilization, a study published in the U.S. journal Science said Thursday.

The flood occurred in roughly 1920 BC on the Yellow river, the study said, which is some two to three centuries later than traditionally thought, meaning the Xia dynasty, and its renowned Emperor Yu, likely had a later start than Chinese historians have thought, too.

According to Chinese legend, Emperor Yu tamed this flood by dredging, earning him the divine mandate to establish the Xia dynasty.

However, no scientific evidence has been discovered before, leading some scholars to believe that the legend of Xia was just a fabrication of later historians to justify political succession, said Qinglong Wu of the Nanjing Normal University, who led the study.

In the new study, Wu and colleagues reported geological evidence for a catastrophic flood on the Yellow River about 4,000 years ago, including remains of a landslide dam and dammed lake sediments.

He said the flood was the result of an earthquake-induced landslide that dammed the Yellow River to form a huge lake in the Jishi Gorge on the edge of the Tibetan Plateau.

The outburst flood sediments in the Jishi Gorge.(Credit: Wu Qinglong/Nanjing Normal University)

Landslide dams like this typically fail by overtopping, and in this case, the dam could have completely blocked the Yellow River for six to nine months before overtopping, said Wu.

"Roughly 11 to 16 cubic kilometers of the dammed lake water was released in a very short period of time when the dam broke, resulting in a huge flood," he told Xinhua.

Using a standard engineering equation to determine flood discharge, the researchers calculated that the waters could have surged down the river at a rate of 300,000 to 500,000 cubic meters per second. The damage may have reached as far as 2,000 kilometers downstream.

"To put that into perspective, that's roughly equivalent to the largest flood ever measured on the Amazon River, the world's largest river," study co-author Darryl Granger, a geologist at Purdue University, said at a teleconference.

"It's among the largest known floods to have happened on earth during the past 10,000 years, and it's more than 500 times larger than a flood we might expect on the Yellow River from a massive rainfall event. So this cataclysmic flood would've been a truly devastating event for anyone living on the Yellow River downstream."

To date the outburst flood, the researchers used radiocarbon dating techniques on skeletons of children who died in the same earthquake that triggered the massive landslide dam, at a prehistoric settlement site called Lajia, 25 kilometers downstream from the Jishi Gorge.

Results showed that the flood happened around 1920 BC, which coincides with the major transition from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age in the Yellow River valley.

"Because this flood happens at a critical turning point in the development of Chinese civilization, this geological event takes on even greater significance," said David Cohen, an archaeologist at National Taiwan University, who also worked on the study.

"This is because the flood dates to the likely period where China's legendary great flood. This is the first time a flood of scale large enough to account for it has been found. The outburst flood could've caused social disruptions downstream lasting for years, and if this is the case, we think it could've been the source of the great flood legend."

The Jishi Gorge upstream the landslide dam, the white grey terraces are sediments of the remnant lake after the outburst flood. (Credit: Wu Qinglong/Nanjing Normal University)

According to legend, it took Emperor Yu and his farther about 20 years to tame this flood. As a result, the researchers proposed a new start date for the Xia dynasty, at 1900 BC.

"The outburst flood provides us with a tantalizing hint that the Xia dynasty might really have existed," Cohen said.

"Our reasoning is like this, if the founding of the Xia dynasty is really tied to a great flood, then here we have evidence for a natural event that could have eventually been recorded as the great flood," he said. "If the great flood really happened, then perhaps it is also likely that the Xia dynasty really existed too. The two are directly tied to each other."

Traditionally, historians have dated the start of Xia to about 2200 BC, whereas a government-sponsored chronology project adopted the date as 2070 BC.

In an accompanying perspective in Science, David Montgomery of the University of Washington wrote: "Great floods occupy a central place in some of the world's oldest stories. And Emperor Yu's flood now stands as another such story potentially rooted in geological events."

 

[JSCh]

An ancient landslide once blocked the Yellow River at Jishi Gorge in China, shown here. The resulting lake eventually burst through the rubble dam, causing what may have been one of history’s largest floods.

Qinglong Wu​

Massive flood may have led to China's earliest empire
By Dennis Normile
Aug. 4, 2016 , 2:00 PM

Many cultures trace their origins to the hazy horizon where history meets legend. In China's case, that blurry line occurs sometime between 2200 B.C.E. and 2000 B.C.E., when a legendary hero named Yu tamed Yellow River flooding and earned a mandate to become the founding emperor of the Xia dynasty, the country's first. That’s the story according to texts written long after the fact, and many Chinese believe their civilization started with emperor Yu. But archaeologists have been unable to find convincing evidence for either the flood or the Xia dynasty itself.

Now, an international team of scientists drawn from the fields of archaeology, anthropology, seismology, and geology have gathered disparate evidence from ancient texts, sedimentary deposits, earthquake-triggered landslides, and skeletons in collapsed cave dwellings to craft a scenario presented this week in Science that they claim supports the legend of a great flood and hints that the Xia dynasty might be real. If the findings hold up, they could lend credence to early historical texts and help resolve a long-running debate over the origins of China and its people.



Full Story -> Massive flood may have led to China's earliest empire | Science | AAAS

###​

"Outburst flood at 1920 BCE supports historicity of China's Great Flood and the Xia dynasty," Science, science.sciencemag.org/cgi/doi/10.1126/science.aaf0842

Flood control initiates Chinese civilization
Around four millennia ago, Emperor Yu the Great succeeded in controlling a huge flood in the Yellow River basin. This is considered to have led to the establishment of the Xia dynasty and the start of Chinese civilization. However, the dates of the events and the links between them have remained uncertain and controversial. Using stratigraphic data and radiocarbon dating, Wu et al. verify that the flood occurred and place the start of the Xia dynasty at about 1900 BC, thus reconciling the historical and archaeological chronologies (see the Perspective by Montgomery).

Science, this issue p. 579; see also p. 538

Abstract
China’s historiographical traditions tell of the successful control of a Great Flood leading to the establishment of the Xia dynasty and the beginning of civilization. However, the historicity of the flood and Xia remain controversial. Here, we reconstruct an earthquake-induced landslide dam outburst flood on the Yellow River about 1920 BCE that ranks as one of the largest freshwater floods of the Holocene and could account for the Great Flood. This would place the beginning of Xia at ~1900 BCE, several centuries later than traditionally thought. This date coincides with the major transition from the Neolithic to Bronze Age in the Yellow River valley and supports hypotheses that the primary state-level society of the Erlitou culture is an archaeological manifestation of the Xia dynasty.​

 

[JSCh]

China scientists show cell subset contains chronic viral infection
Source: Xinhua 2016-08-06 17:04:10

CHONGQING, Aug. 6 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists have defined a subset of a type of virus-specific cells that play a vital role in the control of viral replication in chronic viral infection, possibly paving the way for new ways to treat chronic diseases like HIV/AIDS and cancer.

According to research published online by Nature magazine on Aug. 3, virus-specific cells, CD8 +T, appear to deplete during chronic viral infection.

However, according to the research findings, the cells are able to control viral replication in both animal models and HIV infection.

Researchers found a unique subset that offer higher anti-viral potential than previously known, thus, showing greater therapeutic potential.

The research also identified an important regulator for the generation of this subset.

The research was led by the Third Military Medical University in Chongqing Municipality, with a number of partner institutions. It began in early 2013 with government financial support.

"Through certain means, to increase and stabilize the type of cells can strengthen their virus-purging ability, thus, providing new possibilities for cures," Ye Lilin, co-author of the paper and professor at the Third Military Medical University, told Xinhua Saturday.

Current therapies can only contain the viral replication, but cannot purge them completely in chronic diseases like HIV.

Chinese researchers will now use the findings to further research into immunotherapy in cancer and HIV, Ye said.

 

[JSCh]

China to establish newborns, embryos genome databases
Source: Xinhua 2016-08-07 20:25:07

SHANGHAI, Aug. 7 (Xinhua) -- A genome project for newborn babies was launched in Shanghai on Sunday, to aid the early identification and treatment of hereditary diseases.

Jointly initiated by Chinese Board of Genetic Counseling and Children's Hospital of Fudan University in Shanghai, the project will carry out genetic testing on 100,000 newborn babies over the coming five years.

The findings will be gathered in a database and a genetic testing standard for hereditary diseases will be developed, which will improve the identification and treatment of inherited diseases.

Huang Guoying, president of the hospital, said early identification can help doctors make better treatment strategies and improve the patients' quality of life.

Also on Sunday, the Chinese Board of Genetic Counseling and Reproductive Hospital, which is affiliated with Shandong University, jointly launched China's embryo genome project.

An embryo genome database will improve research and understanding of the development of embryos and improve diagnostic rates.

He Lin, with the Chinese Board of Genetic Counseling, said there are some 7,000 known inherited diseases and China sees about 900,000 babies born with birth defects every year.

 

[Han Patriot]

http://www.viet-studies.info/kinhte/ChinaSupercomputing_FA.htm

The origins of Chinese Supercomputing. We manage to make the vacuum tube even under such hardship. And they thought we made a supercomputer out of thin air, you can actually trace the scientific development in China.

 

[JSCh]

Single-Crystal Graphene Films Grown More Than 100 Times as Fast as Previously Possible
By Dexter Johnson
Posted 9 Aug 2016 | 20:00 GMT

Image: Peking University/Nature Nanotechnology​

The adaptation of chemical vapor deposition (CVD) production of graphene so that it’s compatible with roll-to-roll processing is transforming graphene manufacturing. That effort is being led by companies like Graphene Frontiers, based in Philadelphia.

However, the production of single-crystal graphene on copper foils in a CVD process remains a fairly time consuming procedure. Fabrication of centimeter-size single crystals of graphene still takes as much as a day.

Now researchers at Hong Kong Polytechnic University and Peking University have developed a technique that accelerates the process so that the growth happens at 60 micrometers per second—far faster than the typical 0.4 µm per second. The key to this 150-fold speed increase was adding a little oxygen directly to the copper foils.


Full story -> Single-Crystal Graphene Films Grown More Than 100 Times as Fast as Previously Possible - IEEE Spectrum

 

[JSCh]

Picoscale precision though ultrathin film piezoelectricity
August 10, 2016
by Stuart Mason Dambrot

Piezoelectricity (aka the piezoelectric effect) occurs within certain materials – crystals (notably quartz), some ceramics, bone, DNA, and a number of proteins – when the application of mechanical stress or vibration generates electric charge or alternating current (AC) voltage, respectively. (Conversely, piezoelectric materials can vibrate when AC voltage is applied to them.) The piezoelectric effect has a significant range of uses, including sound production and detection, generation of high voltages and electronic frequencies, atomic resolution imaging technologies (e.g., scanning tunneling and atomic force microscopy), and actuators for highly accurate positioning of nanoscale objects – the last being crucial for fundamental research and industrial applications. That being said, subatomic scale positioning still presents a number of challenge. Recently, however, researchers at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Suzhou, and Duke University, Durham demonstrated vertical piezoelectricity at the atomic scale (three to five space lattices) using ultrathin cadmium sulfide (CdS) films. The researchers determined a vertical piezoelectric coefficient (d33) three times that of bulk CdS using in situ scanning Kelvin force microscopy and single and dual ac resonance tracking piezoelectric force microscopy, leading them to conclude that their findings have a number of critical roles in the design of next-generation sensors and microelectromechanical devices.



Con't -> http://phys.org/news/2016-08-picoscale-precision-ultrathin-piezoelectricity.html

X. Wang et al, Subatomic deformation driven by vertical piezoelectricity from CdS ultrathin films, Science Advances 01 Jul 2016, Vol. 2, no. 7, e1600209,
doi:10.1126/sciadv.1600209

Abstract

Driven by the development of high-performance piezoelectric materials, actuators become an important tool for positioning objects with high accuracy down to nanometer scale, and have been used for a wide variety of equipment, such as atomic force microscopy and scanning tunneling microscopy. However, positioning at the subatomic scale is still a great challenge. Ultrathin piezoelectric materials may pave the way to positioning an object with extreme precision. Using ultrathin CdS thin films, we demonstrate vertical piezoelectricity in atomic scale (three to five space lattices). With an in situ scanning Kelvin force microscopy and single and dual ac resonance tracking piezoelectric force microscopy, the vertical piezoelectric coefficient (d33) up to 33 pm·V−1 was determined for the CdS ultrathin films. These findings shed light on the design of next-generation sensors and microelectromechanical devices.​

 

[JSCh]

Yifang Wang: high energy physics in China
Ling Wang and Mu-ming Poo

Mu-ming Poo is the Director of CAS Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology, and Executive Associate Editor of NSR, and Ling Wang is a science news reporter based in Beijing. ​

Abstract

On 8 March 2012, Yifang Wang, co-spokesperson of the Daya Bay Experiment and Director of Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, announced the discovery of a new type of neutrino oscillation with a surprisingly large mixing angle (θ13), signifying ‘a milestone in neutrino research’. Now his team is heading for a new goal—to determine the neutrino mass hierarchy and to precisely measure oscillation parameters using the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory, which is due for completion in 2020. Neutrinos are fundamental particles that play important roles in both microscopic particle physics and macroscopic universe evolution. The studies on neutrinos, for example, may answer the question why our universe consists of much more matter than antimatter. But this is not an easy task. Though they are one of the most numerous particles in the universe and zip through our planet and bodies all the time, these tiny particles are like ‘ghost’, difficult to be captured. There are three flavors of neutrinos, known as electron neutrino (νe), muon neutrino (νμ), and tau neutrino (ντ), and their flavors could change as they travel through space via quantum interference. This phenomenon is known as neutrino oscillation or neutrino mixing. To determine the absolute mass of each type of neutrino and find out how they mix is very challenging. In a recent interview with NSR in Beijing, Yifang Wang explained how the Daya Bay Experiment on neutrino oscillation not only addressed the frontier problem in particle physics, but also harnessed the talents and existing technology in Chinese physics community. This achievement, Wang reckons, will not be an exception in Chinese high energy physics, when appropriate funding and organization for big science projects could be efficiently realized in the future.



Con't -> http://nsr.oxfordjournals.org/content/3/2/252.full

 

[JSCh]

Construction starts on huge Chinese cosmic-ray observatory
Aug 9, 2016

Seeking pedigrees: LHAASO will look into the origins of cosmic rays​

Construction has begun on one of the world's largest and most sensitive cosmic-ray facilities. Located about 4410 m above sea level in the Haizi Mountain in Sichuan Province in southwest China, the 1.2 billion yuan ($180m) Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory (LHAASO) will attempt to understand the origins of high-energy cosmic rays. LHAASO is set to open in 2020.

Cosmic rays are particles that originate in outer space and are accelerated to energies higher than those that can be achieved in even the largest man-made particle accelerators. Composed mainly of high-energy protons and atomic nuclei, cosmic rays create an air shower of particles such as photons and muons when they hit the atmosphere. Where cosmic rays come from, however, has remained a mystery since they were first spotted some 100 years ago.

Cosmic showers
LHAASO aims to detect cosmic rays over a wide range of energies from 1011–1018 eV using a Cherenkov water detector, covering a total area of 80 000 m2, together with 12 wide-field Cherenkov telescopes. These two types of instrument, which are above ground, will spot the Cherenkov radiation emitted when a charged particle travels through a medium faster than light can travel through that medium. LHAASO will also consist of a 1.3 km2 array of 6000 scintillation detectors that will study electrons and photons in the air showers, while an overlapping 1.3 km2 underground array of 1200 underground Cherenkov water tanks will detect muons.

LHAASO is not the only facility in the world trying to study the origin of cosmic rays. The IceCube facility at the South Pole observes high-energy neutrinos, while the Pierre Auger Observatory in Argentina explores cosmic rays with energies above 1018 eV. "LHAASO will play a complementary role with existing detectors to offer a more comprehensive picture of the cosmic-ray sky," says Yifang Wang, head of the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Challenges ahead
According to IHEP researcher Zhen Cao, who is LHAASO's chief scientist, the construction of LHAASO will not be easy, with the Cherenkov water detectors being particularly tricky. Benedetto D'Ettorre Piazzoli, a former vice president of the National Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN) in Italy, who has been involved in Sino-Italian collaborations in cosmic-ray research, agrees, adding that combining all of these detector types will be difficult. "The deployment, debugging, and operations management of many thousands of detectors of different types is very challenging at a level never faced before," he says.

D'Ettorre Piazzoli is, however, confident that the facility will play an important role in cosmic-ray research. "As LHAASO is a very large installation, with a large amount of many types of detectors allowing the observation of cosmic rays and photons over a wide range of energies, it is expected to provide detailed and statistically relevant information on the transition from the galactic to the extra-galactic contribution," he adds.

LHAASO is an international collaboration that includes scientists from China, France, Italy, Russia, Switzerland and Thailand. First mooted in 2008, the facility won approval from the National Development and Reform Commission of China in December 2015. Haizi Mountain was selected as the site due to its high elevation and good accessibility – being only 10 km away from Yading Airport – the world's highest – and about 50 km from Daocheng County, which will be the base for the LHAASO team.



Construction starts on huge Chinese cosmic-ray observatory - physicsworld.com

 

[cirr]

Chinese scientists tackle conundrum of why humans are brighter than animals with bigger brains

Answer may lie in our ability to create information-relaying particles using much less energy than other species, making our brains more efficient, researchers suggest

PUBLISHED : Thursday, 11 August, 2016, 4:25pm
UPDATED : Thursday, 11 August, 2016, 10:45pm

Chinese scientists have suggested a new theory as to why people are so much more intelligent than animals even though our brains are sometimes much smaller than those of other species.

Researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Neuroscience and Neuro-engineering have previously carried out studies backing the scientifically contentious idea that the brain not only processes and passes on information through electrical and chemical signals, but also with photons, a form of tiny particle that can include light.

In their latest study, the researchers said human brains are able to create information-relaying photons using much less energy than other animals, which suggested they are able to operate more speedily and efficiently than those of other species.

The hypothesis that our brain also operates using other mechanisms rather than just electrical and chemical signals has been around for decades.

Its supporters have included the physicist Eugene Wigner, Nobel Prize laureate in 1963 and more recently the eminent physicist Sir Roger Penrose at the University of Oxford.

These theories include the idea that the brain transmits non-electrical particles, a form of physics which also underpins the idea of the quantum computer.

But other scientists have remained sceptical, with one of their biggest concerns the absence of a physical medium in the brain through which information is transmitted.

The rise of China’s millionaire research scientists

A research team led by professor Dai Jiapei at the Wuhan institute suggested two years ago that neurons, nerve cells in the brain that transmit information, can emit photons.

They were extremely weak, detectable only with the most sensitive equipment, but capable of transmission along brain fibres and circuits, the researchers said.

The generation and transmission of these extremely faint “lights” in the brain was stimulated by a chemical called glutamate, which is commonly used as a flavour additive in food.

In their latest study, Professor Dai and his colleagues sliced tissue samples from the brains of a bullfrog, mouse, chicken, pig, monkey and human.

The neurons, still alive in the culture dish, were then stimulated with glutamate and the photons recorded with specially-built sensors.

They observed the spectral redshift, or the change of light waves from higher to lower energy levels.

Human brain tissue showed the lowest energy photons, followed by the monkey, pig, chicken and mouse, with the frog at the highest level.

Quantum teleportation breakthrough earns Pan Jianwei’s team China’s top science award

“Interestingly, we found that the chicken exhibits more redshift than the mouse, raising the question of whether chickens hold higher cognitive abilities than those of mice,” the researchers wrote in their paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in the United States.

“It has been suggested that birds might have evolved from a certain type of dinosaur and that dinosaurs, which dominated on Earth for a long time, should hold certain advanced cognitive abilities over other animals. Based on this theory, it may be true that poultry have higher cognitive abilities than rodents, at least in language abilities, because certain birds, such as parrots, are able to imitate human words,” the researchers wrote.

The authors said they hoped the findings would suggest a new viewpoint in understanding the mechanisms of the brain and also explain why human brains were better than those of other animals in some advanced cognitive functions, such as language, planning and problem solving.

Traditional measurements such as brain size cannot fully explain differences in intelligence, they said. Elephants, for example, are not smarter than humans and dolphins can outwit whales.

The authors stress, however, that some crucial questions remained unanswered.

Physicists take a ‘quantum leap’ in teleporting photon

It is still not clear, for example, how the brain carries out the transfer of information, coding and storage via photons.

Critics of the “quantum brain” theory have also questioned whether the brain is physically able to relay information through photons.

“The critical questions we are here concerned with is whether any components of the nervous system ... wet and warm tissue strongly coupled to its environment - display any macroscopic quantum behaviours, such as quantum entanglement,” wrote Professor Christof Koch and Professor Klaus Hepp at the University of Zürich in a 2007 paper.


This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as:
Why our brains are best and brightest

http://www.scmp.com/news/china/soci...ists-tackle-conundrum-why-humans-are-brighter