.Key Technologies for Marine Oil Field Prospecting
On June 19, 2002 the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) held the signing ceremony on the cooperation between MOST and industrial enterprises in addressing key technologies related to Bohai Bay oil field prospecting and development under the national 863 Program. During the so-called the 10th Five-Year Plan period(2001-2005), the cooperation will strive for breakthroughs in a number of key technologies such as extensive prospecting and development of thick oil rim oil field, high accuracy prospecting technique, 3-D closed tracking boring technique, sea water polymer technique for oil recovery improvement and offshore engineering security technologies, developing China's own proprietary offshore oil and gas prospecting and development technologies and rim oil field development mode of Chinese characteristics. The cooperation is also designed to provide technical support for realizing prospecting target of 500 million-ton reserves, an annual production capacity for 21 million tons, a 1%-5% oil recovery improvement and build Bohai Sea Oil Field into the third largest oil production base in the country so as to stimulate efficient development of China's offshore oil and gas resources as well as the development of associated industries.
To support the implementation of this dedicated cooperation project, MOST will make an input of RMB 200 million in the 10th period and China General Marine Petroleum Corp. and China Petrochemical Group will invest RMB 620 million in developing critical technologies and associated demonstration. The cooperation agreement signed between MOST and China General Marine Petroleum Corp. and China Petrochemical Group has demonstrated MOST's determination to mobilize more involvement of industries in its 863 Program to accelerate applications and diffusions of high tech results.
RMB 150 Million for Agricultural Produce Processing
As is disclosed by the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology, in the next three years China will make a budget totaled RMB 150 million available for the research and development of deep processing techniques and associated equipment for major agricultural produces, so as to quickly raise China's original innovation capacity and core competitiveness of Chinese agricultural products. Being one of the major special R&D projects under the 10th Five-Year Plan, the implementation of the said project will make China's overall level of agricultural produce processing reach the internationally advanced level in the mid-1990s and realize the historical leap forward of its key technologies from merely tracking down the advanced to producing its own proprietary innovations.
The spokesperson added that the R&D project will work on major food and fruit products such as corn, soybean, rice, wheat, rape, potato, apple, orange and other special fruits, vegetables, as well as animal husbandry products such as meat and milk and forest products like gallnut, rosin and turpentine. China will develop key technologies and equipment for deep processing and process quality control and fast testing systems, work out the products of great market potentials, and spin off a number of deep processing enterprises and research teams with strong innovation capacity to provide forceful R&D support for the sustainable development of China's agriculture.
Food Security Strengthened
The Evaluation Meeting for Key Food Security Technologies sponsored by the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology was recently held in Beijing. It is reported that as one of the major special projects under the 10th Five-Year Plan, the project will cover 4 areas related to the development of food security testing techniques. With a planned budget of RMB 150 million, the project is expected to reach the following targets: preliminarily establish a food security testing and examining system, create lab based testing methods for 400 - 500 items, develop 30- 40 testing reagents, establish 2- 3 national food security centers working under internationally acknowledged standards, work out 400- 500 limit indicators on food security, establish 5-10 food security demonstration parks, spin off 10-20 food security demonstration businesses, obtain 15-20 national patents, nurture and bring out a R&D contingent for food security, and absorb 500-650 high caliber food security experts.
Targets for Advanced Manufacturing and Automation Technologies
Recently the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology has defined its strategic targets for advanced manufacturing and automation in the 10th Five-Year Plan period as follows.
1) While developing major projects and products, China should actively promote research projects of frontier, visionary and strategic nature, work out original and innovative theories and methods, proprietary findings and technical reserves, file 500 or more invention patent applications and obtain relevant software and copyright registration.
2) Develop innovative proprietary products in the fields of MIE, DBMS, MEMS and integrated circuits.
3) The technologies and products derived from the above field shall find their integrated applications in major sectors, typical regions, experimental provinces and cities and leading enterprises, aiming at producing remarkable economic benefits and enhancing the competitiveness of China's manufacturing industry.
4) Establish the strategic research system, consulting service system and R&D bases in the field, and turn out high caliber talents in the field, with full-fledged implementation of strategies for talents, patents and standards.
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INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION |
China-German Joint Research Institute
At the invitation of Ms. Edelgard Bulmahn, German Federal Minister of Education, Science, Research and Technology, Mr. Xu Guanhua, Chinese Minister of Science and Technology and his party visited Germany on the occasion celebrating the 30th anniversary of establishing diplomatic relations between China and Germany. During the visit, the two parties held talks on further strengthening the cooperation between the two countries in the fields of science and technology and an MOU was inked on the joint establishment of a research institute for information and telecommunication technologies.
The Institute, under the principle of reciprocity, will set up its joint labs in Beijing and Berlin respectively to work on relevant research topics and train young scientists. The joint lab to be established in Beijing will mainly develop medium components, built-in software and software integration technologies while its sister lab in Berlin working on mobile telecommunication , especially the third generation mobile telecommunication technology. The joint labs will be operated under the new mechanism sharing the intellectual properties as well as investment. Its researchers will be recruited from the worldwide most qualified candidates.
China-Australia Hearing Cooperation
To make more deaf patients benefit from findings of hearing research activities and artificial cochlea, Beijing Tongren Hospital and Australia Artificial Cochlea Corp. have jointly launched the so-called Hearing Cooperation Project. Starting their cooperation with Beijing Tongren Hospital as early as in 1996, Australia National Hearing Center and Artificial Cochlea Corp. conducted a number of research and education cooperative projects with Tongren Hospital and Beijing Institute of Ear, Nose and Throat. In 1998 they jointly created Hearing Center at Tongren Hospital with integrated functions such as training, teaching, clinical testing and diagnosing, researching and hearing recovery. The latest cooperation between the two parties will see an investment of RMB 3 million from the Australian side in staging courses for Master's degree seekers and conducting the nation-wide training for hearing doctors and technicians in addition to a dozen of topic oriented research activities such as Mandarin Putonghua Language Evaluation System.
Priorities for China-Russian Cooperation
The Sub-committee on Science and Technology under the regular meeting committee of Chinese and Russian Prime Ministers have recently defined that applied chemistry, biotechnology, genetic engineering, new materials and machinery-electronics shall be the priority fields enjoying the collaboration between China and Russia.
At the 6th session of the Sub-committee, both parties discussed the status quo and development of cooperative projects defined by the previous session and worked out the new ones. In addition, the participants had in-depth discussion of and reached consensus on a number of important topics of common interest such as the cooperation among research institutions at national level, defense conversion projects and technical innovations.
Both sides agreed to establish a China-Russia S&T Park in Moscow, the first of its kind in the country. Jointly operated by Heilongjiang China-Russia S&T Cooperation and Industrialization Center and Moscow Dynamics Institute, the Park will be mainly working on collaborative studies and applications of high technologies. The Park will break its ground at the end of this year and be completed with its phaseI project in a timeframe of three years. To initiate the project, the government of both sides will respectively provide not less than USD 4 million for the construction of the Park. Other investors from both sides will also flow their money into the project.
China Has EOS
The EOS of medium resolution developed by Shanghai Institute of Technical Physics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences has been working smoothly on Chinese spacecraft Divine Ship III, which makes China the second country following the U.S. able to develop and send its EOS into space in the world.
The images obtained by our home-made EOS enjoyed competitive resolution against its U.S. counterpart with its channel quality and associated technologies reaching the world advanced level. The said spectrometer is one of the major payloads aboard Divine Ship III and is currently working on its designated sounding experiments in the solar synchronous orbit of an altitude of 343 km. Its sounding missions cover oceans, atmosphere and land, mainly on detecting sea water color and temperature, chlorophyll concentration, suspension mud and sand volume, pollutants, water vapor and aerosol, as well as large scale soil and vegetation distribution. It will also observe sea ice and coastal areas.
It is briefed that EOS is a new generation optic sensor combining both image and spectrum, capable of obtaining detailed spectrum images and fast global coverage, representing the development orientation of most efficient space remote sensors for monitoring dynamic changes of earth environment.
The spectrum images derived from the EOS aboard Divine Ship III will become solid evidences for crop yield estimation, dynamic survey of renewable resources, real-time natural disaster monitoring and investigation of marine environment and preliminary productive forces.
China's High Speed Power Line Telecommunication System
Thanks to the efforts in developing low voltage power grid telecommunication mode, now people may have access to Internet simply via ordinary power source sockets. On June 20, 2002, a priority national R&D project on low voltage power grid (380v/220v) telecommunication system jointly undertaken by China Power Research Institute and Shenyang Power Company passed its approval check. The result indicates that China has possessed the core technologies of high-speed power line telecommunication system and the capability for manufacturing associated equipment and facilities. The prototype high-speed (45Mbps) power line telecommunication system has produced fine in-situ experimental results in Shenyang.
Upon the in-situ evaluations, the Examination Board reached the conclusions that the project has conducted pioneering studies of the theory, applications and engineering technologies for power line telecommunication system and successfully turned out the first home-made high-speed (2Mbps and 14Mbps) power line telecommunication system and established the first experimental power line broadband access network in the country, realized the high-speed power line date telecommunication from household to power switching board and further extended office automation process into households. It is reported that by the end of 2002, an experimental network covering 200 households will be established.
New High Protein Rice
Mr. Hong Yahui, an associate research fellow and others with Hunan Agriculture University have successfully introduced DNA of high protein corn into fine Chinese rice species 91-L. On the basis of the screening process that has lasted for several years, they sorted out 5 new varieties featured with high protein and numbered as DHzao1, DHzao5, DHzao 6, DHzao 8 and DHzao 9. The analysis of rice quality by Hangzhou Rice and Associated Products Examination Center under the Ministry of Agriculture has shown that the new varieties are of an average protein content of 13.9% with 14.9% for DHzao 9, while the protein content of currently dominant rice species is only about 8%, or lower than that of wheat or corn ( 12%-14%).
New Generation Materials for Semiconductor
Nanjing University, the Institute of Physics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Motorola Institute (China) announced on June 25, 2002 in Beijing that they have discovered that both materials of LAO and LAON demonstrate the best thermal stability among the selected candidates for high medium constant materials, capable of economic substitutes in manufacturing conventional semiconductors. It is briefed that the two materials are of the perspective to be grid medium layer of semiconductor tubes or material making semiconductor capacitance, and are able to replace conventional silicon dioxide in manufacturing components under 65 nanometers, playing an important role in manufacturing the next generation semiconductor components.
Comments or inquiries on editorial matters or Newsletter content should be directed to:Mr. Cheng Jiayi, Department of International Cooperation, MOST 15B, Fuxing Road Beijing 100862, PR China Tel: (8610)68512650 Fax: (8610) 68512594
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