China's Top Ten S&T Development in 2003
China's top ten S&T developments selected by 582 academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering were unveiled on January 12, 2004 as follows:
1) China's maiden manned spacecraft flight called a complete success. On October 15, 2003, the Chinese made Shenzhou V manned spacecraft was launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center. The spacecraft's return cabin made its successful earth landing in the main landing patch in Siziwangqi, Inner Mongolia, and Mr. YANG Liwei, China's first astronaut literally walked out the return cabin. The flight has made China the third country in the world possessing the manned space flight technology.
2) Chinese scientists unveiled the molecular mysteries of high-yield rice and achieved major breakthroughs in super hybrid rice study. Prof. LI Jiayang, an academician and research fellow of the Institute of Genetics and Development Biology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the research team headed by Prof. QIAN Qian, a research fellow of China Institute of Rice have not only discovered the gene manipulating the tillering of rice, but also cloned the gene. The development has landed a breakthrough in studying the regulating mechanism of rice tillering and laid an important milestone in unveiling the molecular mysteries of high-yield rice. The finding was published in the Nature magazine. The super hybrid rice breeding project chaired by Prof. YUAN Longping, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering has created the average yield of 807.46 kg/mu and 817.37 kg/mu respectively at Xiangtan County (102 mu) and Longshan County (12mu)(1mu=0.0667ha.) Hunan Province, two rice experimental bases. The result has laid a solid foundation for the future extensive diffusion of super hybrid rice in the country.
3) China has achieved impressive phase findings in the combat against SARS viruses. Researchers have separated the corona viruses and completed the full sequencing of the viruses. In addition, researchers have developed the quick SARS diagnosing kit and a number of anti-SARS drugs, and achieved major progresses in the SARS pathogenesis study, clinic diagnosing and treatment and developing bioprotection device. China’s inactivated SARS vaccination study has entered the clinic experimental phase.
4) Chinese scientists have made breakthroughs in nanometer processing technology for metal surface and producing isotactic metal nanometer cluster. The National Key Lab of Material Science under the Institute of Metals, CAS has successfully realized the surface nitrogenization of pure iron plate in a temperature environment of 300℃ with the help of surface nanometer processing technique. The development has found the solution to the long unsolved the bottleneck in metal surface nitrogenization applications. The finding was published the Science magazine. The International Quanta Structure Center under the Institute of Physics, CAS has successfully worked out a new nanometer material called isotactic metal cluster. Researchers evenly planted aluminum atoms of 1.5 nanometers on the silicon base sheet, from which they turned out 2-D artificial crystal. Researchers have produced 16 varieties of artificial crystal in the same manner. The new finding was published in the Science magazine, Nature magazine and Physics Express respectively.
5) The world first commercial magnetic levitation passenger train made its successful run at the demonstration line in Shanghai. Being a major fruit derived from the high tech cooperation between China and Germany, the commercial magnetic levitation rail line has a total length of 33 km, capable to entertain the magnetic levitation car at a speed of 430 km/h. It only takes 8 minutes for the train to complete a one-way run. 1000 and more S&T personnel from 47 Shanghai based institutions got involved in 140 and odd related experiments, from which came out 8 patents . The high quality project has made China the third country in the world after Germany and Japan possessing the magnetic levitation technology.
6) The Three Gorge Dam has successfully kept the water to its prescribed level, opened up the permanent ship channel and put the first group of power generators into operation. On June 10, 2003, the water level of the Three Gorge Dam officially reached the expected level of 135 meters, and the century old dream of “creating a vast lake among the gorges” came true. On June 16, 2003, the Three Gorge Dam opened up its ship channel, the largest inland ship channel in the world. On November 22, 2003, No. 1 power generation unit of the Dam was officially connected to the electric power grid for commercial power generation. Up to date, all six generators for the phase one power generation project have been put into operation, created a world record for the construction and operation of hydraulic power generation units.
7) The Quanta Communication Lab of Chinese University of Science and Technology applauded for the major progresses it has achieved. The Lab has successfully realized the concentration of quanta tangled state. By taking advantage of the said technology, researchers have worked out for the first in the world the quanta repeater, a key component in the long distance quanta communication, which laid a foundation for realizing the long distance quanta communication in the future. The finding was published in the Physics Express. The Nature magazine published in its cover story the paper on the random tangled state purification by Prof. PAN Jianwei and his collaborator from Vienna University.
8) Massive data processing super server called a success. The National Intelligent Computer R&D Center under the Institute of Computation Science, CAS and Shuguang Corp. have jointly developed Shuguang 4000L system which is made of 40 racks and 644 CPUs, capable for the peak speed calculation at 3 trillion time/second. With an internal memory of 644G and a storage capacity for 100 trillion bytes, the system has been designed with a strong expansion capacity up to 80 online racks with a peak speed reaching 6.75 trillion time/second. The system can work for both high performance “scientific calculation” and “information service” in a parallel manner.
9) Controllable thermal nuclear fusion study achieved major breakthroughs. The HT-7 Superconductivity Tokmak Lab under the Institute of Plasma, CAS has achieved major breakthroughs by realizing the maximum electronic temperature exceeding 50 million degree centigrade and obtaining the repeatable discharging duration longer than 60 seconds with the longest duration reaching 63.95 seconds. The development has made the Lab’s experiment unit the second in the world capable to produce high temperature plasma at the minute level. The Lab still keeps its world leading position by making the existence duration of highly confined plasma 220 times the energy confinement duration.
10) Chinese scientists discovered the 4-wing dinosaur. Drs. XU Xing and ZHOU Zhonghe and others of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, CAS have discovered through carefully examining the dinosaur fossils unearthed in Liaoning Province that the dinosaur, the ancestor of birds, used to have four wings, possibly capable for gliding. The discovery provided the key evidences for the scenario that flying birds originated from teju animals and had a gliding development stage. The Nature magazine published the finding as its cover story.
Ten Most Popular S&T Events
The massive campaign to select ten most popular S&T events in 2003 has wound up lately. Jointly sponsored by the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology, S&T Daily and CCTV, the campaign has attracted the voting by nearly 140,000 audience through China TV Newspaper, CCTV website and CCTV Public Information Center. The voting has resulted in the following ten major events that have drawn the most attention of the Chinese public.
1) On October 15, 2003, China successfully sent its first manned spacecraft Shenzhou V into space. After touring around the earth for 14 rounds, the return cabinet safely landed in the prescribed area, which marked the complete success of China’s maiden manned space flight.
2) SARS event. In the combat against the unexpected breaking out of SARS epidemic, researchers had discovered corona viruses, worked out quick diagnosing technique and advanced the vaccination study. All these have once again demonstrated the miraculous strength of science and technology.
3) The Three Gorge Dam made the stored water to the prescribed level, and the century old dream of “creating a vast lake among the gorges” came true.
4) Qinghai-Tibet Railway, the rail line at the highest altitude above sea level in the world has proceeded smoothly with breakthroughs in key technologies.
5) China kicked off its pre-phase key technology study for the moon exploration project.
6) Chinese made fighter plane Xiaolong/FC-1 made its successful maiden flight.
7) Chinese scientists unveiled the molecular mysteries of high-yield rice.
8) Chinese scientists successfully deciphered the new genetic codes of hepatitis B.
9) The critical experiment of No. 2 power generation reactor of the Qinshan Nuclear Power Station called a success.
10) Tsinghua University worked out its intelligent automobile.
Progress on Supramolecular Self-Assembly
The Science magazine published in its issue of January 2nd, 2004 the paper of Chinese scientists Deyue Yan, Yongfeng Zhou and Jian Hou of Shanghai Jiaotong University on self-assembly of macroscopic tubes, the first of its kind in the world reporting the macroscopic self-assembly. The paper tells the scientists' efforts to generate multiwalled tubes millimeters in diameter and centimeters in length, which has not only realized the supramolecular self-assembly at the macroscopic level, but also
made China in the leading position of the study.
The findings have demonstrated that the process from the direct molecular self assembly to the formation of macroscopic matters is relevant to the formation of a living matter, which enlightens people with a possible new origin of life. In addition, the finding has pioneered the self-assembly of irregular large molecules and expanded the scope of supramolecular self-assembly study. In the meanwhile, Chinese scientists proposed and proved the mechanism behind the supramolecular self-assembly/ They have not only elaborated the phenomena observed in the experiment, but also provided useful guidance for studying the self assembly of other irregular large molecules. It is believed that the findings have shone the enlightening light on other related scientific disciplines as numerous natural phenomena such as blood vessels, gastrovascular cavity and plant stalks are formed through the microscopic self-assembly of organic molecules.
Advanced Submarine Positioning System
Under the support of the national 863 program, the researchers of the Chinese Academy of Survey and Mapping and No. 715 Institute under China Shipbuilding Company have successfully developed the high accuracy submarine positioning system, the first of its kind in the country. The new system is able to achieve a horizontal positioning accuracy up to 5 cm and vertical accuracy of 30 cm at a submarine depth of 45 m. The development has made China one of the few countries in the world following the US, France and Germany who have mastered the high accuracy positioning technique.
Experiments have shown that the system is not only able to perform tracking and dynamic positioning of submarine targets above the water surface, but also possess some useful new functions that its overseas counterparts do not have such as submarine target oriented positioning and instant reporting the depth of submarine targets.
In the past couple of years, researchers had made breakthroughs in a number of key technologies and independently worked out 48 signal processing boards and control boards. Researchers also completed the testing and experiments of 30 and odd key technologies, in addition to developing required instruments such as submarine receiver and transmitter.
Proprietary 4-WAY Server
On the basis of fully absorbing the key technologies of advanced servers, Shuguang Corp. has recently worked out its proprietary 4-way 64-digit server. Capable to support up to four 64-digit AMD CPUs simultaneously, the new server has demonstrated its strong processing, internal memory expansion and management capacity.
By taking advantage of the 64-digit AMD central processor, the 4-way server is compatible for both 32-digit and 64-digit calculation, which makes itself a desirable tool for addressing the bottleneck problem of 32-digit calculation in terms of the calculation capacity and internal memory and for promoting the transition from 32-digit to 64-digit calculation.
Protein Efficiency for Poultry Feed
The study team headed by Prof. YAO Junhu of Northwest University of Agriculture and Forestry has proposed the new mode to increase the efficiency of animal protein utilization. The new concept has led to testing the domestic poultry's internal amino acid loss through isotope injection, the first of its kind the world.
Researchers created the isotope injection approach to test the internal amino acid loss of domestic poultry through isotope mark and metabolism checking. Comparing with the currently prevailing consecutive isotope feeding, the new method has the merits of easier and faster application with lower cost but higher accuracy. On the basis of metabolism and feeding experiments and diffusion results, researchers found that the poultry's daily feeding shall be mainly determined by the indicator of amino acid. Therefore, in the high temperature season the daily feed shall be featured with low protein, high amino acid, high energy and high vitamin. The new daily feed recipe has proved effective in reducing the nitrogen and water emission in poultry's waste, which allows more efficient utilization of protein. The study team has also worked out the rational amount of amino acid and major nutrients needed in poultry's daily feed and a typical daily feed recipe for the northwest section of the country.
Intelligent Arc Welder
The trackless full-position crawling arc welder robot developed by the Nanchang University has recently passed the verification check. The new technology has made the intelligent welder robot capable to perform welding functions such as independent crawling and full position and multiple level based automatic welding without calling for tracks, navigation or pre-written programs. The development of the welder robot was financed by the national 863 program and National Natural Science Foundation.
It took 4 years for researchers to work out the welder robot aiming at addressing the position welding difficulties commonly seen in the construction of large steel structures and the associated quality control. Designed with a unique wheel based crawling mechanism for the full-position crawling operation in an extensive area, the ark welder robot has numerous merits such as the compact structure with strong bearing capacity for heavy load (over 120 kg), flexible movement control and fast response.
Original Finding for Low-loss Optical Wave Guiding
Dr.TONG Limin and Prof. HE Sailing of the Photo-Electromagnetic Wave Research Center of Zhejiang University have in collaboration with the scientists of Harvard University achieved original findings on nanometer optical wave guiding. Researchers have obtained the well evenly distributed silicon dioxide strands at sub-micron and nanometer levels through a new preparation method, and realized the low-loss transmission through the strands that are thinner than the wavelength of visible light. The finding was published in No. 426 issue of the Nature magazine.
It is explained that the study aiming at improving optical wave guiding capacity has confined the diameter of silicon dioxide strands to several dozens or several hundred nanometers so as to allow longer wave length, smoother surface and lower transmission loss. Showing well improved indicators, the nanometer strands pulled through the new approach are believed extremely suitable for making integrated nanometer optical components. It is also believed that the finding is of the bright application perspectives in the field of physics, chemistry, biology and materials.
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)68512650 Fax: (8610) 68512594
http://www.most.gov.cn
