China Science & Technology Forum

[bobsm]

Chinese-developed live stream platform gets very popular in US
(People's Daily Online) 10:59, July 01, 2016

Top downloads of "all categories" and "photography and videos" of App Store on June 29.

Amid the competition among live stream platforms including Facebook Live and Twitter'sPeriscope, Live.ly, the newly released live streaming app from Musical.ly, has achievedoutstanding performance and secured the top slot in the APP Store.

But you would have never thought the app was developed by a Shanghai-headquarteredChinese team with only 50 staff members.

Launched in April 2014, Musical.ly garnered a steady increase in downloads in a year. Butafter April 2015 when some improvements facilitating the share by users were made,downloads began to skyrocket and all the way to shoot to the top of the APP Store's twoapplications "all categories" and "photography and video" on July 6.

Musical.ly launched its Live.ly on June 17 and the live stream app was ranked the secondand the third place in "photography and video" and "all categories" respectively only innine days

Musical.ly makes it easy and fun to create amazing 15-second videos and impress yourfriends. Simply select a sound and start lip syncing! Anyone can be an awesome singerwith musical.ly!

On June 27, at the TechCrunch Shanghai 2016, the must-attend conference for thetechnology and Internet industry in China, Luyu Yang, co-founder of Musical.ly saidMusical.ly has about 100 million users in Europe and the United States, and more than 10million daily active users, 50 percent from Europe and 40 percent from the United Stated,but almost no from China.

When asked why Mysical.ly did not put Chinese market in the priority, Luyu Yang saidfirst of all because the team has only more than 10 people and their strength does notmatch their ambition, and partly because European and American popular culture havefeatured personality and labels, expanding global market should start from these marketswith strong culture. "The reason why we are growing fast in Southeast Asia and SouthAmerica is greatly related with the fact that we chose the US as the starting point," addedLuyu Yang

Musical.ly App.

Different from Facebook and Twitter, users of Musical.ly are between 13 years old and 20years old. In addition, the current product meets the needs of users who cannot experienceon social network sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

Musical.ly received $ 16.6 million financing in August 2015. In May this year, TechCrunchreported that a new round of financing totaling approximately $ 100 million is underwayand valuation of Musical.ly in this round of financing is estimated to reach about $ 500million.

http://en.people.cn/n3/2016/0701/c90000-9080282.html

 

[cirr]

Science & Technology Award 2016

 

[cirr]

 

[cirr]

 

[bobsm]

3-D printed spine successfully implanted in man's body in Beijing
(People's Daily Online) 15:19, July 04, 2016

(File Photo)
Mr. Yuan suffered from a malignant tumor of the spine, chordoma, which eroded five sections of his spine. From a medical point of view, the only possible cure consisted of removing the tumor through surgery. However, the removal of the tumor would also mean removal of part of the spine.　　

Recently, Yuan underwent a successful surgery to have 3-D printed thoracic and lumbar segments of the spine implanted by Professor Liu Zhongjun of the Peking University Third Hospital. The length of the segments totaled 19 centimeters and replaced the parts of Yuan’s spine that had to be removed.

Six hours after the surgery began, Yuan was taken out of the operating room. Doctors observed only a small amount of bleeding, and Yuan’s vital signs were stable.

"We can use metal 3-D printing technology to create a piece of artificial spine similar to the real one that was removed," Liu said. Fitted with such an excellent copy of the original anatomy, patients are more likely to eventually work and live like ordinary people.

Yuan is just one of many potential patients for this treatment in China. According to reports, the 3-D printing of human body parts for the purpose of implantation has gained approval from the China Food and Drug Administration (CFDA). This means that more patients are expected to receive treatment in the form of this advanced technology.

http://en.people.cn/n3/2016/0704/c98649-9081270.html

 

[JSCh]

New Zealand-China joint venture technology to slash Beijing subway energy use
Source: Xinhua 2016-07-05 19:12:00

WELLINGTON, July 5 (Xinhua) -- Energy use by Beijing's subway system could be cut by up to 40 percent using ground-breaking technology employed by a New Zealand-China joint venture.

Wellington-based Victoria University said Tuesday that research developed by its Robinson Research Institute was part of the new multi-million-dollar joint venture deal with Milestone Science and Technology Ltd., based in Jiangsu province.

The joint venture would see the see the formation of three new companies to build new subway technology, as well portable compact magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) systems to improve medical services in remote areas of China, said a statement from the university.

Two of the companies would be based in the Jiangsu Zhongguancun Science and Technology Industrial Park as part of a superconductivity innovation center.

The third, alongside the Robinson institute near Wellington, would contract research and development from Robinson and other parts of Victoria University, and develop and manufacture HTS (high temperature superconducting) products that would be marketed by the China companies.

One of the China companies would develop the HTS flywheel, initially for Beijing's subway system, one of the city's biggest energy users, Robinson principal engineer Dr Rod Badcock said in the statement.

"The HTS flywheel is effectively an energy storage device. When trains slow down to stop at stations the flywheel will store the train's kinetic energy and can later supply it back to them to help with take-off," said Badcock.

"Currently, a great deal of energy is expended in braking and accelerating trains. With the HTS flywheel to capture and reuse this energy, the savings are estimated to be as high as 40 percent of the energy used by the Beijing subway system," he said.

"Energy storage not only represents the potential for energy saving in subway systems but also in supporting renewable energy generation. The same technology can be used to store energy generated by solar or wind, so in periods of low-energy production a store can be tapped into as needed."

The second China company would focus on the podMRI, a portable compact MRI system, which represented a significant advance for about 5,000 regional hospitals in China, Robinson director Professor Bob Buckley said in the statement.

"For many, there are barriers to moving from a low-field MRI, which is relatively low resolution but easy to install, to a high-performance high-field MRI, which can run to millions of dollars and require substantial support for installation and maintenance," he said.

"The advantage of the podMRI technology is it is low-cost, lightweight, easy to install and cost-effective to maintain, but with a substantial increase in resolution compared with existing low-cost systems."

Potential sales of the two technologies could run into tens of millions of dollars, Buckley said.

Milestone chairman Mi Wang said he saw substantial market opportunities in the podMRI.

Robinson was "one of the few places with the experience to design and build the high-speed HTS rotors needed for the subway flywheels my company is developing," Wang said.

 

[JSCh]

Earth-size telescope tracks the aftermath of a star being swallowed by a supermassive black hole
Last Updated on Tuesday, 05 July 2016 12:28
Published on Wednesday, 06 July 2016 06:01

Radio astronomers have used a radio telescope network the size of the Earth to zoom in on a unique phenomenon in a distant galaxy: a jet activated by a star being consumed by a supermassive black hole. The record-sharp observations reveal a compact and surprisingly slowly moving source of radio waves, with details published in a paper in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The results will also be presented at the European Week of Astronomy and Space Science in Athens, Greece, on Friday 8 July 2016.

​

This artist’s impression shows the remains of a star that came too close to a supermassive black hole. Extremely sharp observations of the event Swift J1644+57 with the radio telescope network EVN (European VLBI Network) have revealed a remarkably compact jet, shown here in yellow. Image credit: ESA/S. Komossa/Beabudai Design.

The international team, led by Jun Yang (Onsala Space Observatory, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden), studied the new-born jet in a source known as Swift J1644+57 with the European VLBI Network (EVN), an Earth-size radio telescope array.

When a star moves close to a supermassive black hole it can be disrupted violently. About half of the gas in the star is drawn towards the black hole and forms a disc around it. During this process, large amounts of gravitational energy are converted into electromagnetic radiation, creating a bright source visible at many different wavelengths.

One dramatic consequence is that some of the star's material, stripped from the star and collected around the black hole, can be ejected in extremely narrow beams of particles at speeds approaching the speed of light. These so-called relativistic jets produce strong emission at radio wavelengths.

The first known tidal disruption event that formed a relativistic jet was discovered in 2011 by the NASA satellite Swift. Initially identified by a bright flare in X-rays, the event was given the name Swift J1644+57. The source was traced to a distant galaxy, so far away that its light took around 3.9 billion years to reach Earth.

Jun Yang and his colleagues used the technique of very long baseline interferometry (VLBI), where a network of detectors separated by thousands of kilometres are combined into a single observatory, to make extremely high-precision measurements of the jet from Swift J1644+57.

​

Three years of extremely precise EVN measurements of the jet from Swift J1644+5734 show a very compact source with no signs of motion. Lower panel: false colour contour image of the jet (the ellipse in the lower left corner shows the size of an unresolved source). Upper panel: position measurement with dates. One microarcsecond is one 3 600 000 000th part of a degree. Image credit: EVN/JIVE/J. Yang.

"Using the EVN telescope network we were able to measure the jet's position to a precision of 10 microarcseconds. That corresponds to the angular extent of a 2-Euro coin on the Moon as seen from Earth. These are some of the sharpest measurements ever made by radio telescopes", says Jun Yang.

Thanks to the amazing precision possible with the network of radio telescopes, the scientists were able to search for signs of motion in the jet, despite its huge distance.

"We looked for motion close to the light speed in the jet, so-called superluminal motion. Over our three years of observations such movement should have been clearly detectable. But our images reveal instead very compact and steady emission - there is no apparent motion", continues Jun Yang.

The results give important insights into what happens when a star is destroyed by a supermassive black hole, but also how newly launched jets behave in a pristine environment. Zsolt Paragi, Head of User Support at the Joint Institute for VLBI ERIC (JIVE) in Dwingeloo, Netherlands, and member of the team, explains why the jet appears to be so compact and stationary.

"Newly formed relativistic ejecta decelerate quickly as they interact with the interstellar medium in the galaxy. Besides, earlier studies suggest we may be seeing the jet at a very small angle. That could contribute to the apparent compactness", he says.

The record-sharp and extremely sensitive observations would not have been possible without the full power of the many radio telescopes of different sizes which together make up the EVN, explains Tao An from the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory, P.R. China.

"While the largest radio telescopes in the network contribute to the great sensitivity, the larger field of view provided by telescopes like the 25-m radio telescopes in Sheshan and Nanshan (China), and in Onsala (Sweden) played a crucial role in the investigation, allowing us to simultaneously observe Swift J1644+57 and a faint reference source," he says.

Swift J1644+57 is one of the first tidal disruption events to be studied in detail, and it won't be the last.

"Observations with the next generation of radio telescopes will tell us more about what actually happens when a star is eaten by a black hole - and how powerful jets form and evolve right next to black holes", explains Stefanie Komossa, astronomer at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany.

"In the future, new, giant radio telescopes like FAST (Five hundred meter Aperture Spherical Telescope) and SKA (Square Kilometre Array) will allow us to make even more detailed observations of these extreme and exciting events," concludes Jun Yang.

Further information

The results are published in a "No apparent superluminal motion in the first-known jetted tidal disruption event Swift J1644+5734", J. Yang, Z. Paragi, A.J. van der Horst, L.I. Gurvits, R.M. Campbell, D. Giannios, T. An & S. Komossa, 2016, MNRAS Letters, Oxford University Press, doi:10.1093/mnrasl/slw107.​

Earth-size telescope tracks the aftermath of a star being swallowed by a supermassive black hole | Royal Astronomical Society

 

[JSCh]

A Chinese robot to solve city parking misery
Reuters

Published on Jul 6, 2016
A laser-guided smart robot is being developed in China that parks a car in under two minutes. As Stephanie McIntyre reports, it can squeeze into even the smallest and most awkward spaces with no need for a driver.

 

[ahojunk]

A Chinese robot to solve city parking misery
Reuters

Published on Jul 6, 2016
A laser-guided smart robot is being developed in China that parks a car in under two minutes. As Stephanie McIntyre reports, it can squeeze into even the smallest and most awkward spaces with no need for a driver.

.
This news was first reported about 2.5 years ago.
It was first published by Reuters on 15 Nov 2013.
Nonetheless, it is still good as a refresher.

 

[JSCh]

Researches show groundwater reserves on Qinghai-Tibet Plateau increasing
2016-07-08 11:58:07 | From:China Tibet Online

Researches show that groundwater reserves on Qinghai-Tibet Plateau are on the rise, Xinhua reported.

These results have important implications for restoration of plateau ecology and global climate change research.

Wang Hansheng, researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Geodesy and Geophysics, was involved in the research and said that, in recent years scientific researchers used satellite gravity observation methods to capture gravitational signals reflected by changes in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau groundwater. And, according to the gravitational signals, researchers calculated changes in groundwater reserves.

Through many years of data analysis, they have recently revealed the changing trends in groundwater reserves for Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and its surrounding areas from 2003 to 2009.

Scientists first discovered rising trends in groundwater at the river basins of Jinsha, Nujiang, and Lancang, the sources of Yangtze and Yellow rivers, Qaidam Basin, Qiangtang Nature Reserve and others. The total annual increase is about 18.6 billion plus or minus 4.8 billion cubic meters.

Understanding changes in groundwater reserves on Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is of great value to plateau ecological restoration, agricultural development, prevention of geological disasters, engineering design and geothermal development. It is also important for the hydrological cycle and global climate change research.

This research was jointly completed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Geodesy and Geophysics, the Swedish Land Survey and the Department of Earth Sciences in the University of Hong Kong. Research results have already been published in the “Earth and Planetary Science Letters” magazine.

 

[JSCh]

China readies next-gen radio heliograph for solar activities monitoring
Source: Xinhua 2016-07-07 22:22:20

BEIJING, July 7 (Xinhua) -- China has completed its work on its next-generation solar radio heliograph, which will be used to study solar activities such as flares and coronal mass ejections, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) announced Thursday.

The Chinese Spectral Radioheliograph (CSRH), built at Ming'antu, a radio quiet region in China's Inner Mongolia, consists of 100 antennas with different frequency spectra covering an area of 10 square kilometers. It can monitor solar activities on a wide imaging resolution spectrum.

The project was initiated in 2009 and has been funded by the Ministry of Finance.

Wang Enge, vice president of CAS, invited scientists from abroad to join in the CSRH project, saying it will enable China to better forecast solar activity and monitor space weather conditions.

On Sunday, work was completed on the world's largest radio telescope, the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope in Guizhou Province.

 

[JSCh]

Unmanned ships deemed helpful in survey and patrol of South China Sea
(People's Daily Online) 14:05, July 08, 2016

(Jinghai 1 unmanned ship on display. Photo: Xinhua)​

More unmanned Chinese ships are expected to be deployed to domestic and international waters including the South China Sea and the Antarctic for oceanic survey and patrol missions, state media has reported.

Founded in 2010, the Research Institute of Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USV) Engineering at Shanghai University, which is also China's first USV development institute, has been providing a series of independently designed unmanned ships coded “Jinghai,” Xinhua News Agency reported.

In 2013, Jinghai 1 helped to conduct an oceanic and geological survey of Xisha and Nansha Islands in the South China Sea, while Jinghai 2 traveled with Chinese icebreaker Xuelong to Antarctica in 2014 to help with underwater detection and mapping, according to Xinhua. Research and development of Jinghai 7 is currently underway.

Additional unmanned ships could shoulder more responsibilities in the near future, including surveying and mapping coastal areas, maritime search and rescue, offshore patrol, anti-smuggling and sea route protection. Experts also noted that the ships could participate in more missions near ports and oil drilling rigs, according to Xinhua.

Apart from Shanghai University, several other universities and institutes under China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation and the Chinese Academy of Sciences have also joined the USV research and development process, Xinhua noted.

 

[JSCh]

China Focus: Chinese hospitals using swallowable robots for medical examinations
Source: Xinhua 2016-07-11 20:08:00

WUHAN, July 11 (Xinhua) -- New pill-sized robots that patients swallow to perform endoscopies, or examinations of the digestive tract, have been put into use in more than 100 Chinese hospitals.

The robot, created by a Chinese joint venture company based in Silicon Valley, contains a magnetic positioning chip, a probe and a light.

As an alternative to a conventional endoscopy in which a probe is passed over the tongue and down the throat, the new technology provides a 360-degree examination of the patient's stomach in about 15 minutes, without causing discomfort.

"The inspection results are as good as a traditional gastroscopy, but the capsule robot is easier to control and cleaner, removing the risk of cross-infection," said Xie Xiaoping, a doctor at the endoscopy center of Wuhan Union Hospital.

China has a high rate of digestive tract disease. There have been about 400,000 new cases of stomach cancer in China in each of the past five years, accounting for 42 percent of fatalities from such cancer worldwide.

Success in treating the disease lies largely in how early it can be detected. But the discomfort associated with conventional endoscopies makes many people reluctant to have them, reducing early detection of stomach diseases, according to Xie.

A patient surnamed Li from Wuhan has suffered stomach problems for years, but fear of endoscopy prevented her from going to hospital. She recently had an examination via the capsule robot in Xie's hospital.

Xie said hundreds of patients like Li have had the inspection without any pain. They must fast for eight hours before the examination, and the capsule is excreted from the body afterwards.

Historically, capsule endoscopy products used in Chinese hospitals have all been imported, resulting in very high examination fees. Domestic products have greatly reduced the cost of an examination to about 3,000 to 5,000 yuan (450-750 U.S. dollars).

"Though the product is small, there are over 300 components and more than 100 patented items in each capsule," said Xun Dandan, a researcher with ANKON Technologies, the robot's developer.

Xun expects the cost of examinations with the capsules will drop over time.

 

[JSCh]

Desert Moss Found to be Expert of Water Collection for Survival
Jul 12, 2016

different appearance of dry and wet moss shoots (Image by XIEG)

moss crusts in Gurbantunggut Dersert (Image by XIEG)​

Almost nothing in the world is a better survivor in the desert than moss. It was one of the first living things out of the relatively safe and comfortable oceans to the barren and exposed earth planet millions of years ago.

But how? How does this species manage to survive with so little water, especially in the vast and bleak desert where moisture is hardly available? This has been a mystery that puzzled scientists for ages.

But now we may find the answer for this, thanks to the effort of a group of international scientists from China and the United States. The scientists took Syntrichia caninervis as their research subject and finally uncover the secret of desert moss’ water collection and transportation system.

After studying the plant for four years, researchers from Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Utah State University, and Brigham Young University discovered that Syntrichia caninervis uses highly specialized leaves, instead of its roots, to collect water from dew, fog, snow and rain with incredible efficiency.

“For the first time, scientists have examined in detail how this moss (Syntrichia caninervis) pulls water right from the air using its awns. These tricks may one day help engineers design better equipment to collect water in arid locales,” reviewed the Science Magazine in their newly publication.

Syntrichia caninervis, is a tiny, delicate desert moss whose leaves are capped with spindly white hairs called "awns." These plants have a water collection system so effective it can suck water vapor straight from the air, rather than absorbing it from the ground via roots.

When the air is misty, foggy or even humid, trapped dewdrops move up grooves in the moss leaves by capillary action. The tiny drops form a bigger drop to be absorbed and stored by the plant. When it rains, moss awns will help reduce splash and capture raindrops by the same mechanism.

“Using these different structures, this plant might get a drink every day, where other desert vegetation gets water maybe once a week,” said Tad T. Truscott, leading researcher of this study.

The findings were published in the journal Nature Plants on Jun. 6. For more details, please refer to http://www.nature.com/articles/nplants201676.

Morphology of S. caninervis and the associated awns. a,b, Biological soil crusts formed by S. caninervis in the Gurbantünggüt Desert, China (a) and the Great Basin, USA (b). c, Photograph of a dry moss shoot. d, Photograph of a rehydrated moss shoot. e–g, SEM photographs of the surface of a moss awn, including highly magnified views. h, A tilted high-magnification photograph of a surface moss awn, where micro- and nanogrooves are marked by yellow and green triangles, respectively. i, Local cross-section of the moss awn from a cutting plane marked by a red dashed line in h. j, Magnified view of the area enclosed by the blue box in i. (Image by XIEG)

Desert Moss Found to be Expert of Water Collection for Survival---Chinese Academy of Sciences

----------------------
​

Video: This desert moss can water itself with fog | Science | AAAS

 

[JSCh]

How China is rewriting the book on human origins
Fossil finds in China are challenging ideas about the evolution of modern humans and our closest relatives.
Jane Qiu, 12 July 2016


Link -> How China is rewriting the book on human origins : Nature News & Comment