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

Making Counties Wealthy with S&T

Pursuant to an action plan to build the capacity of both counties and their people with S&T means, and an interim method for managing the special fund for such activities, the Ministry of Science and Technology, in collaboration with the Ministry of Finance, selected 89 counties and townships to be the beneficiaries of the initiative.

The special project is designed to build up a range of special pillar industries that are able to uplift local areas and bring up more earnings for farmers. As a long term project to build up fortune making capacity of these counties and their people, the initiative is set to accelerate S&T advancement and public S&T services at the county and township levels, providing an enhanced S&T support for a full-fledged, coordinated, and sustainable economic and social development. Priorities will be placed on the middle and west sections and some underdeveloped areas in the east section. Every year a number of counties and townships will be selected to implement S&T projects, through which some 500 proven technologies will be diffused. The project will, in a period of 3 to 5 years, make about 300 selected counties and townships be part of the special action. These role model counties and townships will in turn lead some 1000 other counties and townships to build up their fortune making capacity, using projects as the carrier. 

In a circular notice issued recently, provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions are required to get prepared for the implementation with concrete action plans. Localities are also asked to make funds and policies ready for the effort, and to strengthen the supervision, monitoring and evaluation of the implementation. Local authorities concerned are required to pay great attention to the implementation, and to strengthen their guidance roles using effecting measures, ensuring a quality implementation with valid results.

Rural S&T Service Thrives

China’s rural S&T service system has witnessed a fast development in recent years, and is expecting a new boom, reported at a meeting on rural S&T service system, sponsored not long ago by the Ministry of Science and Technology. The system, developed in diversified modalities, has been enriched with new entities, fields, mechanisms, and modes.

Recent years have seen diverse new S&T service modalities stemmed out of practices. For example, ‘farming experts compound’ in Baoji, Shaanxi, and ‘S&T envoy system’ in Nanping, Fujian, are two typical new S&T service modalities welcomed by farmers. The new service modalities add new initiatives in the traditional agriculture diffusion system, making themselves a long lasting mechanism for findings spin-off, combining both profit making and public S&T services. The new system creates new approaches for findings spin-off, and for making farmers rich. According to a briefing, China has so far nurtured out over 300 experts compounds, more than 500 technological innovations centers, some 100 S&T findings spin-off centers, and over 100 technology demonstration associations in rural areas. In addition, the S&T envoy system has been introduced into one tenth of the counties in the country, with over 10,000 S&T envoys dispatched. 

Enhanced Semiconductor Laser

A project to study the near infrared semiconductor photoelectric materials at the nanometer level, undertaken by the Institute of Semiconductors, part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has achieved substantial progresses, under an initiative for advanced materials of the National 863 Program. The project has rolled out a GaInNAsSb/GaAs laser device with a work wavelength of 1.58 microns, capable of emitting consecutive laser beams under indoor temperatures. The development marks China’s possession of intellectual properties in developing GaAs based near infrared photoelectric materials and components.

Based on the 1.3-micron materials grown from molecular beams, researchers extended the optical wavelength of quantum wells to 1.55 microns, through increasing the amount of added nitrogen and using GaNAs layers. In the meantime, they noticeably raised the quality of crystals to the requirements for laser device making, using stibium as a surface activator for the growth with optimized anneal conditions. The new laser device realizes a consecutive 1.58-micron laser beam emission under indoor temperatures, with a threshold electric current density at 2.6 kiloampere/cm², and an output larger than 30 miliwatts. The system gave out for the first time in the world a laser emission under indoor temperatures, using GaAs based semiconductor laser device above 1.5 micron. The development confirms the feasibility of the full applications of GaAs components at the wavelengths ranging from 1.2 to 1.6 microns, which heralds a bright perspective for commercial applications in optical communications.

Innovative Drugs

Under an initiative for innovative drugs and the modernization of traditional Chinese medicine, the Ministry of Science and Technology has rendered its support for 285 topic-based studies. These studies have covered five major areas: 1) therapeutic drugs for major diseases that endanger people’s lives, including tumors, cardiocerebrovascular diseases, infections, immunity, nerve system, endocrinology, and reproduction system; 2) preventive and therapeutic drugs for major infectious diseases, including HIV, schistosomiasis, and tuberculosis; 3) researches on drug preparation, mainly on new drugs. Priority support is made available to 39 studies of advanced preparation techniques, including slow emission and skin penetration; 4) major non-patent drugs. Special projects are created for non-patent new drugs and mimic drugs, especially for 12 major non-patent drugs; 5) the secondary development of traditional Chinese medicines. These research projects have become successful role models for new drug research and development, and provided rich technical reserves and innovative sources for the sustainable development of China’s pharmaceutical industry.

Resources Sharing Manufacture Grid

A project to study resources sharing oriented manufacture grids and the associated methodology, undertaken by Northwest Polytechnical University, has recently passed an experts’ verification check. The research team has completed both theoretical and application studies, rolled out a prototype system that passed the preliminary application tests, and established integration with the high tech industrial manufacture grid platforms in the region.

Mainly studying the theory and methodology of resources sharing based manufacture grids, researchers have found solutions to the key application technologies, which makes an integrated support available for grid and coordinated manufacturing activities. The effort spurs up an accelerated development and application of manufacture grids, taking advantage of the global resources, in quickly upgrading the enterprises’ manufacturing capacity.

The team established a resource model for the manufacture grid environment, with manufacturing resources as the core, making it represent the resource knots in the grids. Researchers also developed a core system for the manufacture grid service platform that is advanced, general, open-ended, and scalable for the secondary development. In addition, an application environment is created to address manufacturing issues, in line with application requirements, and services are provided to meet the needs of manufacturing processes.  The resources sharing oriented manufacture grid system, rolled out by the project, is made up of a line of powerful resources sharing sub-systems for grid resources registration, grid resources search, mission management, standard component database, and online applications. 

Implement ERP Quickly

Fast implementation of ERP and an associated reconfigurable ERP system, a project jointly undertaken by Tsinghua University and Tianjin University, has recently passed an experts’ review. In an attempt to meet the information process of China’s small and medium-sized businesses, the research team tackles the implementation process at two levels: a box-theory based reconfigurable management and implementation system, and a component technology based reconfigurable industrial information system and the associated quick implementation.

The reconfigurable management system is built to reconfigure the elements relating to feasible ERP structures, processes, cost management, and distributive decision making. Researchers established a new generation of reconfigurable ERP system that can be adapted to diverse industrial environments through initialization. It can upgrade itself to the environment changes at different phases, through maintaining dynamic reconfigurations, and can produce a new ERP system structure for industries or between industries, using box-theory based support.

When coming to a reconfigurable industrial information system, the component based technology produces functional components needed by new ERP structures at a required level. The implementation can result in a method array meeting both the reconfiguration and efficiency needs of enterprises for diverse requirements. As far as the implementation is concerned, both box-theory and component based ERP systems come up with experiences for ERP implementations. Researchers also rolled out the key technologies for optimizing the performance of ERP system and safe visit control. In addition, they developed an evaluation method that can judge the success of an ERP implementation, using a key-success factor based technology.

The research team designed a fast navigation tool to support the Chinese made ERP platform, in a move to encourage using China’s proprietary ERP software. The tool, reconfigurable for industrial structures, data, and workflows, has been used by three enterprises on a trial basis, and achieved desired application results.

Sea Water Irrigates Farmland

In collaboration with the National Marine Environmental Monitoring Center, Tianjin University, Dalian Polytechnical University, and Hebei Zhongjie Friendship Farm, Beijing Normal University kicked off a comprehensive technical study in January 2004 for utilizing sea ice resources of the Bohai Sea. The research team separates halogen sacs from sea ice, using centrifugal means, and enhance salt water channels in the ice through temperature modulation. Researchers have worked out key technologies for sea ice desalination, and produced desalination facilities using different means, including centrifuge, temperature modulation, gravity, and counter infiltration. They also completed a whole range of field experiments from land based sea ice collection, to desalination, and further to shipping. Abundant technical parameters and cost indicators have been obtained from a small scale desalination process. Based on the analysis of the impacts of sea ice based irrigation on the yields of 14 grain, cash, and feed crops, and salt content in soils over a hundred mu(1 mu= 0.0667 hectare) of irrigated farmland, researchers sorted out the species that fit the sea ice water irrigation with different salinities, and defined a salinity limit for such irrigation. In the meantime, the team made an experiment to grow Sarotherodon sp in desalinated sea ice water. All these efforts have provided valuable agricultural application examples using sea ice water. The equipment designed by the team can produce desalinated sea ice water with a salinity lower than 2‰, costing less than RMB 4 a ton.

Beijing Proteomics Center Operates

With the support of the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology, a Beijing proteomics research center was put into official operation on October 29, 2005, at the Beijing Zhongguancun Life Science Park.  In collaboration with the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Tsinghua University, Peking University, Jaingzhong Pharmaceuticals, and Beijing Promotion Center for Biotechnology and New Medicines, the Chinese Academy of Military Medical Sciences established the Center, the first of its kind in the country, to work on proteomics, with a mandate to become a world-class base for studies, training, academic exchanges, and findings spin-off in the area. It provides technology support for the long and medium term development of China’s proteomics and the associated industries. Occupying an area of 12,600 m², a number of large scale research platforms for proteomics have been established in the research building of the Center.

China’s Top 100 Computers

China recently unveiled its own Top 100 list for high performance computers. Homemade brands landed a marginal overtaking against overseas counterparts by 51%. The IBM supercomputer imported by the China Meteorological Administration sits on the top of the list, with a peak speed calculating 21 trillion times per second. The Shuguang 4000A at the Shanghai Supercomputing Center comes to the next, for calculating 11 trillion times per second. The overall performance of the listed high performance computers exceeds the threshold of 100 trillion times at 102 trillion times, or 1.92 and 5.18 times that of 2004 and 2003 respectively.

As far as the application fields are concerned, these computers are mainly developed for scientific computation, telecommunication, energy, banking and insurance, taxation, industry, government, atmospheric study and meteorology, education, bioinformatics, and database. Petroleum exploration and universities have claimed 29 and 27 of the top 100 respectively.

The imported high performance computers on the list are mainly manufactured by HP and IBM. The domestic made ones are mostly from Shuguang, Legend, Langchao, Shenwei, Shanghai University, and Tsinghua University. It is worth mentioning that Shuguang has 25 sets on the list, with a peak speed ranging from 300 billion times to 11 trillion times.

       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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