CHINA  SCIENCE  AND  TECHNOLOGY
NEWSLETTER
The Ministry of Science and Technology
People's Republic of China

N0.400	April 20,2005
	IN THIS ISSUE
* Chemical Elements Survey * USTC’s New Training Modality * Biocarpet Wrap up Sands * China’s First 64-bit CPU * Quantum Communication Runs 13 km * Humanized Monoclonal Antibodies
		SPECIAL ISSUES

Chemical Elements Survey

A national survey project to map out geographic distributions of chemicals passed the verification check on May 23, 2005. Initiated by China Geological Survey, and jointly implemented by 28 provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions, the project has produced unprecedented findings in terms of areas surveyed, data collected, accuracy, analysis, and mapping efforts. The survey led to the establishment of a platform to share basic geological services in multiple fields, marking a historical leap from research findings to social applications.

The survey, covering an area of 6.5 million square kilometers in 28 provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions, analyzed 1.42 million geochemical samples, tested 39 elements using sophisticated large instruments, and obtained 55.4 million original data. The systematic collection of these data has resulted in a national database for geochemical mapping. A nationwide geochemical atlas is compiled to reflect 39 chemical elements under diverse geological backgrounds and their geochemical properties. By revealing geochemical distributions of China’s water-born sediment elements and presenting geochemical backgrounds of surface elements, the findings constitute important evidences for basic geological studies. The survey has spotted more than 50,000 abnormal sites, from which some 2900 were found with minerals, and more than 700 mines with gold, silver, copper, lead, zinc, tin, tungsten, and molybdenum. Of them, some 70 mines are rated at large or medium scale. Findings also revealed the distribution of environment related elements, including beneficial nitrogen, phosphor, potassium, boron, manganese, and hazardous cadmium, mercury, lead and arsenic, which is valuable for agriculture, urbanization, environmental protection and local diseases researches. The survey expanded applications of geochemistry, and demonstrated the distribution of major mineral resources in the country. 

Meanwhile, Chinese researchers have developed key geochemical mapping techniques for special geological sites, including arid desert land, Karst areas, cold lake and forest swamps. The survey team also worked out methods and technical modalities to test 39 chemical elements at the trace level, greatly enhanced the sensitivity, accuracy, and correctness of sample analyzing. Researchers integrated diverse techniques for geochemical mapping, including database technology and mapping techniques. The survey and associated studies have enriched the theory of geochemical mapping.

USTC’s New Training Modality

The University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) inked on May 17, 2004 an agreement with the Institute of High Energy Physics, part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), in a move to forge full-fledged cooperation ties with the latter in the field of disciplinary capacity building and training. USTC also singed on May 24, 2004 a cooperation agreement with the Shanghai Institute for Biological Sciences under CAS, to establish a department of system biology at the University, the first of its kind in the country. USTC has so far established full-fledged cooperation ties with nearly hundred institutes under the CAS system, becoming the largest research-education alliance in the country. 

To build itself into a world-class university, USTC had sent more than 200 students to work for the socalled ‘student research program’ initiated with CAS institutes. The joint research endeavors have created 142 projects, of which 10 are listed as priorities, with a paid-in fund of RMB 30.18 million.

Beijing based Institute of High-energy Physics, a part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (a research body that established its cooperation tie with USTC in earlier days), allows the Department of Modern Physics to construct four sub-systems for BESIII, a large science project undertaken by the Institute for phase II development of the Beijing Positron and Electron Collider. Not long ago, both sides established a joint lab for nuclear detection technology and nuclear electronics, working on key technologies in high-energy physics, nuclear physics, particle astrophysics, and nuclear technologies, in an attempt to establish a new CAS key lab. In collaboration with Beijing Institute of Physics, Institute of Semiconductors, and Shanghai Institute of Technical Physics, all affiliated to CAS, Prof. GUO Guangchan, CAS academician with USTC who chaired a national 973 project, has harvested a range of world-class research findings that constituted outstanding contributions to China’s information security.

Biocarpet Wrap up Sands

The Chinese Academy of Sciences will soon kick off an innovative sand control project, using the socalled biocarpet. Scientists use biotechniques to duplicate the microbe crusts that are naturally formed over arid and semi-arid wastelands, and spread the biocarpet over sand surface, in an attempt to fix flowing sands and prevent desertification.

Biocarpet is a compound made up of bacteria, epiphyte, blue and green algae, lichen, moss and soil. The inside bacteria and biological roots can tie up sands, effectively reducing the soil erosion caused by winds and water, absorbing nitrogen from air, and improving soil.

With other supporting means, biological crusts can be further developed and expanded, to facilitate the restoration or reconstruction of degraded ecosystems. Scientists will keep working on related studies and demonstrations, including formation of biological crusts and associated sand fixing mechanism, major compositions and functions of biological crusts, scale production of biological crusts, and associated field planting.

While studying the principles and mechanism of biological crusts. the biocarpet sand control project will put new findings into commercial applications. The new tactics can drastically reduce sand control costs, especially compared with existing wind breaking and sand control measures, with an enhanced ecological adaptability, and needing no additional irrigations.

E-platform for Natural S&T Resources

With the support and participation of the China Ministry of Science and Technology and experts, an e-platform project, launched on January 1, 2004, has completed its overall planning with technical implementation solutions ready for distributive data storage and centralized publicizing. The project also defined the content for natural S&T resources catalog, major functionalities, contents for virtual museum and associated display modality design. As of the end of 2004, the project has completed the phase-I development, including a natural S&T resources portal system, integrated database, background management system, and virtual museum. It also realized the interconnection with the national S&T infrastructure portal. The entire system has been running smoothly since its trial operation in January 2005.

In the course of construction, the project solicited comments and suggestions from government agencies and experts in the field, through several rounds of large workshops and trial operation.  Thanks to the full support of leaders and experts, the project completed the construction of the natural S&T resources sharing platform from scratch, offering efficient, prompt and accurate search for physical resources, and multiple-angle and element based displays. The platform can answer the questions for identifying, locating and obtaining a desire resource. Along with improvement and added resources data, the platform will become a play in sharing natural S&T resources.

RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT

China’s First 64-bit CPU

Thanks to nearly 2-year painstaking efforts, China has rolled out its first generic 64-bit CPU featured with high performance, jointly announced on April 18, 2005 by the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Ministry of Information Industry.  Named as Longxin II, the thumb sized square chip gathers 13.5 million transistors, with a peak capacity of 2 billion calculations per second for a single accuracy check, and 1 billion calculations per second under a dual accuracy check. The new chip registers a maximum frequency of 500MHz, and a power consumption ranging from 3 to 5 watts, much lower than the similar products manufactured overseas. It reaches 1.3 GHz for actual performance tested under a standard testing procedure, or 2 to 3 times that of a VIA processor. Longxin II upgrades performance by ten times that of Longxin I, in a period of time as short as 22 months.

As the first Chinese made generic high performance CPU in 64-bit, the new system supports diverse applications, including Windows, desktop systems, Internet browsing, DVD playing among many others. Longxin II has its strength in accommodating low-cost information products. The new chip will, together with its existing and future sisters under the same product line, constitute series chips for embedded, desktop, server and high performance applications. Longxin II promises broad application perspectives, as it is designed mainly for Linux based desktop network terminals, low-end servers, network firewalls, Router switching, multimedia network terminals, and disk free workstations.

Quantum Communication Runs 13 km

 

Prof. PAN Jianwei, University of Science and Technology of China, and his collaborators, has proved for the first time in the world, through an experimental free-space distribution of entangled photons, that the desired entanglement can still survive after entangled photons have passed through the noisy ground atmosphere with a distance beyond the effective thickness of the aerosphere. The experiment also proves the feasibility and security of quantum communication. The finding was published in the April 22 issue of Physics Review Letters.

Quantum cryptography communication, a technology transmitting information through single photons or entangled photons, offers an absolute security. However, photons may suffer a heavy loss as being absorbed in the course of optic based transmission. As a result, it is difficult to realize an optic based long distance quantum communication, with a maximum possible distance limited at 100 km. Prof. PAN selected a mountain top TV tower 281m above sea level as the first experimental spot, and prepared entangled photons pairs for the purpose. He used two specially designed transmission telescopes to “fatten” the fine photon beams that may easily scatter, before sending them to two experimental spots 13 km away from one another. Researchers collect photon beams at two spots using the telescopes of same specifications. A quite proportion of entangled photons survived the transmission, though many others became decayed. The quantity and quality of the information that photons carried are completely in line with the requirements for a satellite based global quantum communication. The 13-kilometer is not only the maximum distance so far achieved for a free-space distribution of entangled photons, but also makes the maximum distance for the fiber-based quantum cryptography.

Humanized Monoclonal Antibodies

H-R3, a new humanized anti-epidermal growth factor receptor monoclonal antibody (mAb), developed by Biotech Pharmaceuticals under the initiative of China Ministry of Science and Technology, was granted on April 11, 2005 with a new drug certificate issued by the China State Food and Drug Administration. As an anti-tumor mAb developed with modern biotechnologies, including genetic engineering, antibody engineering, and cellular engineering, the new drug is able to suppress tumors through interrupting tumor cell cycles, accelerating tumor cell decaying, blockading the formation of tumor vessels, preventing infiltration and spread, and enhancing chemotherapy effect. With numerous merits, including stronger specificity, higher bio-utilization, and fewer adverse effects, the new drug can noticeably increase cancer curability and patient survival expectancy. Clinical trials in nasopharynx cancer patients at an advanced stage have shown an increased complete recession by 30%, using a combined h-R3 therapy, compared with pure chemotherapy. Clinical trials also show excellent safety of the new drug, without serious adverse effects. 

The new drug is currently being used on a clinical trial basis in Canada, Germany, and India , showing promising efficacy. In addition to applications to nasopharynx cancer as so approved, h-R3 can also be used to treat other cancers with over-expression of EGFR, including head and neck cancer, non-small cell lung cancer, colon cancer, esophagus cancer, breast cancer, kidney cancer, and prostate cancer. The new drug expects very broad commercial applications, as Chinese population have seen high occurrences of these cancers.

Rovers That Can Reassemble

A rover system that can be reassembled into different shapes, developed by the Shenyang Institute of Automation, a part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has passed a verification check. Made up of a mainframe and triangle caterpillar wheels, the mainframe serves as the parent robot, and wheels sub-robots. A sub-robot is connected with a mechanical arm. What makes it different from other rovers is that it can be reassembled into different shapes to meet circumstantial needs. When its ‘arm’ grasps the parent robot, the sub-robot becomes a rolling wheel. The coordinated movement of sub-robots can accomplish what rovers have performed on Mars.

The Shenyang Institute of Automation has so far rolled out a number of sub-robot prototypes. A caterpillar sub-robot can move independently, step over obstacles, ‘stand up” to grasp an object, or get connected with other sub-robots to perform a coordinated movement. Scientists believe that these independent structures can accomplish different probe tasks, such as finding routes and collecting samples on Moon or Mars. They also can be used to probe dangers in rescue missions. 

World Largest Combustible Ice Sink

A gas hydrate sink of 430 square kilometers, the largest of its kind in the world, has been discovered. The discovery was made by a China-German joint expedition over the northern continental slopes of China South Sea, aboard a scientific survey ship named SUN. During the expedition, scientists found massive carbonate reefs in the continental slopes east of the Dongsha Islands, with a depth ranging from 550-650m to 750-800m. Sea floor video and samples collected show the existence of massive natural carbonate growths in pipe, chimney, bread ring, plate, and cake shapes. They are either lying standalone on the sea floor, or protruding from sediments, with Bivalves dotted among them. Gigantic carbonate reefs erect on the sea floor, looking quite similar to the ‘chemical reefs’ found at the rims of Costa Rica and external seas of Oregon, though much larger than the latter in size.

Children’s Robot Teacher

A robot teacher named Baizhixing (wisdom father) recently made its debut at the Harbin Industrial University. Designed with a height of 35cm, having man-like facial expressions, the proprietary robot is able to speak, accompanied with matching movements of limbs, head and neck.

The robot, a product combining both bionic technology and modern children teaching theory, is an integration of internal control system, sophisticated structures, intelligent bionic techniques, CPU communication, sound synthesizing, and network scalability. Equipped with proprietary core technologies, the robot expects to be a desirable teacher to enlighten kids and help them develop soundly.

The Harbin Industrial University, a domestic leader in robot technology, has so far rolled out a dozen of robot systems for diverse applications, including code compiling, piping, wall climbing, intelligent service, medical service, and mini-operations.

       Comments or inquiries on editorial matters or Newsletter content should be directed to:

Mr. Mao Zhongying, Department of International Cooperation, MOST 15B, Fuxing Road Beijing 100862, PR China  Tel: (8610)58881360 Fax: (8610) 58881364

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