News on China's scientific and technological development.

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Scientists discover way to grow back tooth enamel naturally

Researchers in China hope to regrow tooth enamel without using fillings and start trials in people within one to two years.

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From Zambia to China, Drones Unleashed to Defend Crops Against Fall Armyworm

Almost exhausted and sweating all over, Bai Anwei, a crop-protection service provider in Yunnan, China, had been travelling around different cornfields with drones to spray pesticides for maize crops. He had already kept working by fields throughout the day, from 6 a.m. to 2 a.m. the next morning. “We don’t have much time. This is the only way to stop the pests from marching and wreaking havoc over more farmlands,” he said with a hint of bitter smile.

6,005 miles from China, Fraser Zhang was leading his crop protection team for another drone spraying experiment against the same kind of pests at dusk in Zambia. He has witnessed how Zambia has been suffering from the plague of pest disease nationwide.

The rampaging pest that perplexed Bai and Zhang is called fall armyworm, a highly destructive crop invader originated from the Americas and spreading rapidly across Africa and Asia in recent years. This pest has been terrifying farmers and causing extensive yield loss around the globe, just like a virus.

Without well-validated natural enemy or genetically modified maize, local farmers in Africa and Asia mostly resort to traditional insecticide spraying but, in some cases, find the effect disappointing. Having developed new technology to replace the old fashioned, XAG starts actively engaging in the fight against fall armyworm in some of most affected areas, such as Zambia and China.

From Ground to Air: Fall Armyworm Fight Goes Intelligent in Zambia

Fraser Zhang, founder of Sunagri Investment Zambia Limited, is one of the early adopters who introduced drones into the battle against fall armyworm. As an agriculture technology service provider, he has been utilising XAG’s plant protection drones for aerial spraying in Zambia since 2018.

Fraser Zhang and his team member

Zambia is one of the regions where fall armyworm struck first in Africa in early 2016. The country has been facing a formidable fight, since the pests prefer to feast on maize which is the staple crop for Zambians. According to a national household survey, up to 99% of farmers reported that their cornfields had been infested by fall armyworm, with the average yield loss reaching 35%, equivalent to an economic value of nearly USD 160 million.

“Corn is considered a type of crop easier to grow and manage without any additional chemical treatment. However, the outbreak of fall armyworm changes everything. Farmers have to spray pesticides to kill the pests, otherwise they would be left penniless with a devastated cropland,” Fraser Zhang explained the situation.

In Zambia, use of pesticides involving hand sprayers has remained the most widely deployed method to contain fall armyworm. But obviously, this is not a safe, effective measure to ward off pests with strong migration and reproductive ability. “It is unpractical to conduct manual spraying over farmlands larger than 5 hectares, let alone a massive waste of pesticides and the risk of chemical poisoning,” Zhang added.

In addition, farmers usually get more frustrated when they have sprayed pesticides multiple times but without any effect. Inappropriate use of pesticides might be the reason, as well as fall armyworm’s unique natural habits that make it impossible to eliminate the pests by hand sprayers.

XAG

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to replace manual spraying in Zambia

Fraser Zhang describes the pest as a ‘crop-killing monster’, since it not only eats maize but also attack 80 additional crop species, including wheat, sugarcane, sorghum and ginger. “At daytime, the fall armyworm caterpillars usually hide inside the central part of corn and sometimes burrow into the soil. When they grow older, they would generate large quantities of frass to block the whorls, making it difficult for chemicals to contact the pests.”

When facing such tough situation, Zhang realised that the combat against fall armyworm needs to go aerial. So, he reached out to XAG for its precision UAS spraying solution. During last years’ growing season, his team has conducted a series of field experiments and practical operations on three commercial farms, covering approximately 200 hectares of croplands.

Spraying experiemnt on fall armyworm control

At Kalele Farm, located in Kabwe, Zambia, fall armyworms were successfully defeated on 30 hectares of heavily infested cornfield. “The farm manager thought his maize crops couldn’t stand a chance against the pests and decided to place a bet on new tech. We utilised the spraying drones to apply chemical treatment twice, and the result was quite satisfying as a yield loss was avoided,” Zhang said.

Swarm operation for higher efficiency

Now with a year of accumulated experience on UAS crop protection, Zhang and his company Sunagri have started to introduce

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’s drone-based spraying service to more local companies and commercial farms, including Zambia Sugar, Kasama Sugar, York Farm, Butter Mere Farm and Seedco.

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This is how Zhang elaborated the solution mechanism.

“First, drones should be deployed for operation after sunset, when the nocturnal pests stop concealing themselves. Second, with the intelligent atomisation spraying system, the drone can target pesticides uniformly onto the leaves, whorls and stems of the corn. Of course, low-toxicity systemic insecticide would be more effective to increase pest mortality and protect the plants.”

Night operation

As for the future plan, Fraser Zhang intends to expand his agribusiness and supply smart agriculture equipment to other nearby African countries, such as Uganda, Malawi and Rwanda, which are also subject to the torture of fall armyworm.

An Integrated, Tech-backed Campaign in China

In China, the fight against the ‘fearlessly’ marching fall armyworm is also intractable. Since the confirmation of its presence in January 2019, the pest has reached 21 provinces and is yet to invade the northeast corn-production area. With experience of prevention and treatment on other armyworm species, the agricultural ministry stays highly alert to this new invader.

The Yunnan Province, located in Southwest China, was the first to be attacked by fall armyworm migrating from neighbouring Myanmar. It is also the most severely afflicted region, with 86,000 hectares of croplands being infested by mid-June.

In Wenshan, an autonomous prefecture of Southeast Yunnan, XAG’s local distributor Bai Anwei has assembled a professional crop protection team offering cost-effective UAS spraying service to smallholders.

“I have never seen such an aggressive pest before. Instead of a picky eater, it can encroach all parts of the maize plant including leaf, whorl, stem and cob. Especially, if the pests attack the young crop at its early whorl stage, the maize might reach a condition called ‘dead heart’ in which the plants stop growing anymore,” Bai said.

Fall armyworm was first spotted in Wenshan at the end of March, when local farmers had no idea what it was or mistook it as other similar pests. Villagers’ slow response to the ambush of fall armyworm and their initial inability to identify this species have resulted in an extensive infestation among corn and sugarcane fields. Crop failures put many farmers’ livelihood at risk and forced them to switch to grow other crops immune to this pest disease.

XAG's drone spraying for maize on mountainous area

Under such circumstance, chemical control was justified to curb the spread of fall armyworm. However, the manual spraying approach widely used by Chinese farmers is neither effective nor sustainable.

“When you spend the whole day hand spraying one infested area, you would end up finding out that the pests have already invaded other parts of the land that was originally intact. Besides, crops here are mostly grown in mountains, where large ground-based machines are not flexible enough to operate,” Bai explained the reason.

This agricultural combat requires a prompt, effective large-scale operation backed by drones, which are nimble enough to reach tall plants on mountainous area. In June, under the guidance of local authority, Bai Anwei and his team participated a three-week intensive operation with seven P Series plant protection UASs from XAG to spray for the crops infested by fall armyworm.

Government-initiated UAS operation in Wenshan

These were tough days, though. During the operation, Bai and other drone operators often worked from morning till night to offer treatment on as many as farmlands, despite that pesticide spraying is most effective at night when the pests venture out for feeding. Bai is clearly aware of the best operation time, but he had no choice but to work day and night because of the large-scale invasion.

According to statistics published by the local government, fall armyworm was detected in 15,000 hectares of cornfields in Wenshan by the end of July. The affected area is too large whereas sufficient smart devices and crop protection professional are both lacking. With only 7 drones available for the operation, Bai Anwei is one of the few UAS crop protection providers in this less developed region.

Fully autonomous operation to prevent farmers from chemical poisoning

Smallholders’ reluctance to accept new technologies for agricultural production is one of the main reasons why drone remains uncommon in Wenshan. Nevertheless, the aerial battle against fall armyworm has changed the attitude of many local farmers who were sceptical towards agriculture drones at the very first beginning. On nearly 270 hectares of croplands that Bai’s drones had winged over, the pest damage was managed to its minimum.

“XAG’s drone enables a unique spraying application that makes insecticides more evenly adhere to a broader crop surface. Having witnessed its high efficiency and cost-effectiveness, farmers rushed to sign up for our service, hoping to save their broken lands,” Bai said.

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Huawei unveils ‘revolutionary’ 5G chipset amid US pressure

Chinese tech giant Huawei unveiled its latest high-end system-on-chip (SoC) 5G chipset, Kirin 990, on Friday in Beijing, which the company calls a new breakthrough amid the ongoing US crackdown.

The 7-narometer chipset, with 10.3 billion crystal valves, is the most powerful 5G SoC, which supports both 5G NSA and SA - two types of networks - and a "revolutionary breakthrough" in both 5G and artificial intelligence technologies, Richard Yu Chengdong, head of Huawei's smartphone business, said at the launch ceremony at IFA in Berlin, which was live-streamed in Beijing.

The new chipset is expected to power its Mate 30 series, demonstrating its technological development roadmap not affected by the US ban, and also reaffirms the Chinese company's 5G ambitions, analysts said.

The new chipset will feature an integrated 5G modem, laying the ground for the company's flagship smartphone Huawei Mate 30 on September 19. The new product series is also widely believed to be proof of Huawei's stronger core technologies when faced with political headwinds.

It shows Huawei has developed more integrated solutions to compete with Qualcomm and Samsung in 5G core technologies, and the launch of the new chipset is also critical for the Chinese market in the global 5G race, Neil Shah, an industry analyst at research institute Counterpoint, told the Global Times on Friday.

"This has been in development for the past two years, but I believe the US crackdown won't affect the [Huawei] components' product roadmap until next year," he said.

With the Kirin 990, a 5G smartphone can reach an upload speed of 1.25 Gbps and download speed of 2.3 Gbps, as shown at the launch. It can help download a two-gigabyte song in a few seconds.

"Kirin 990 has long been in development, and as such is unaffected by the US entity listing," Geoff Blaber, technology analyst at CCS Insight, told the Global Times on Friday.

Since Huawei dominates the domestic smartphone market with a more than 35 percent share, the new chipset will also accelerate the 5G smartphone roll-out while reducing product costs.

The forthcoming Mate 30 series is reportedly US chipset-free, showcasing the self-reliance of Huawei's core technologies amid US crackdown.

When asked about how much the company still relies on chips produced by US companies, Huawei fellow Ai Wei did not directly address the question. "However, we always consider the continuous opening-up and innovation would help us deal with uncertainties and will not be restricted by others," Ai told the Global Times.

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China spent nearly 2 trillion yuan ($280 billion) on R&D in 2018, with the R&D intensity reaching 2.19%, according to a communiqué jointly issued by the National Bureau of Statistics and the Ministry of Science and Technology and Ministry of Finance.

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China's spending on research and development (R&D) hit a record high at 2.19 percent of its GDP last year, up by 0.04 percentage point from the previous year, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

The country's total expenditure on R&D amounted to 1.97 trillion yuan (about 278 billion U.S. dollars) last year, up by 207.2 billion yuan compared with that in 2017, according to a report released by the NBS.

The investment in basic research for the first time surpassed 100 billion yuan last year, accounting for 5.5 percent of the total spending, said the NBS.

In 2016, six provincial regions in China, including Guangdong, Jiangsu, Beijing, Shandong, Zhejiang and Shanghai, each invested more than 100 billion yuan on R&D.

China's expenditure on R&D has seen double-digit growth for three consecutive years. And since 2013, the country has remained in the second place in terms of R&D spending worldwide, said the NBS statistician Li Yin.

Li said greater financial support and an improved R&D investment policy system is needed, so as to make the R&D spending more efficient and targeted.

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China's lunar rover Yutu-2 has driven 284.66 meters on the far side of the moon to conduct scientific exploration on the virgin territory.

Both the lander and the rover of the Chang'e-4 probe switched to its dormant mode for the lunar night on Friday (Beijing time), according to the Lunar Exploration and Space Program Center of the China National Space Administration.

China's Chang'e-4 probe, launched on Dec. 8, 2018, made the first-ever soft landing on the Von Karman Crater in the South Pole-Aitken Basin on the far side of the moon on Jan. 3.

A lunar day equals 14 days on Earth, a lunar night the same length. The Chang'e-4 probe switches to dormant mode during the lunar night due to lack of solar power.

During the ninth lunar day of the probe on the moon, the scientific instruments on the lander and rover worked well, and a new batch of 2.9 GB scientific detection data was sent to the core research team for analysis.

As a result of the tidal locking effect, the moon's revolution cycle is the same as its rotation cycle, and the same side always faces Earth.

The far side of the moon has unique features, and scientists expect Chang'e-4 could bring breakthrough findings.

The scientific tasks of the Chang'e-4 mission include low-frequency radio astronomical observation, surveying the terrain and landforms, detecting the mineral composition and shallow lunar surface structure and measuring neutron radiation and neutral atoms.

The Chang'e-4 mission embodies China's hope to combine wisdom in space exploration with four payloads developed by the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden and Saudi Arabia.

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The following are the highlights of China's key technology news from the past week:

AI PILOT ZONES

China will construct around 20 new artificial intelligence (AI) innovative development pilot zones by 2023, according to a recent work guideline issued by the Ministry of Science and Technology.

The guideline said the pilot zones will promote the deep integration of AI and socio-economic development, as well as improving the AI innovation ability and level.

ROBOT STANDARD

China has published a national standard for ground search-and-rescue robots, according to a source of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

Drafting of the national standard, initiated by the Standardization Administration of China, was undertaken by the Shenyang Institute of Automation under the CAS, in cooperation with units including the National Earthquake Response Support Service and a number of leading robot companies.

ARTIFICIAL HEART

A Chinese artificial heart design used in patients with aerospace technology will go into clinical research by the end of this year, according to its developer. Once reaching the market, it may help millions of people in China suffering from weak hearts.

Developed by scientists from the No. 18 Research Institute under the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, the country's leading rocket maker, the artificial heart called HeartCon weighs only 180 grams and is smaller than the size of a fist.

5G BASE STATIONS

Chinese telecom giant China Mobile said Thursday it has built more than 20,000 5G base stations in 52 key cities across the country. It plans to provide 5G commercial services in more than 50 cities by the end of 2019.

China Mobile will invest 24 billion yuan (3.39 billion U.S. dollars) to accelerate the construction of the 5G network.

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Deutsche Telekom first to market in Germany with limited 5G rollout

BERLIN/FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Deutsche Telekom stole a march on its competitors by announcing a limited rollout of 5G services in its German home market on Wednesday, targeting early adopters in cities with the high-speed mobile technology.

Existing 5G trials will be opened up to public use in the German capital Berlin and in Bonn, where Deutsche Telekom is headquartered, with four more cities to follow this year. By the end of 2020, 20 German cities will get 5G coverage.

“Our goal now is to get 5G to the streets, to our customers, as quickly as possible,” Deutsche Telekom’s Germany head, Dirk Woessner, told a glitzy presentation in Berlin.

Networks running on 5G offer much faster download speeds than existing 4G services while latency - or reaction times - is reduced to milliseconds. That can power multi-player video games or run billions of devices and sensors connected to the industrial Internet of Things (IoT).

Deutsche Telekom bid 2.17 billion euros ($2.45 billion) for 130 Megahertz of the 420 MHz of 5G spectrum allocated last month in Germany’s longest-ever auction of mobile frequencies.

It competes with existing operators Telefonica Deutschland and Vodafone, while new market entrant 1&1 Drillisch also acquired spectrum to serve as the basis for a fourth national network.

The market leader, which is partly state owned, had complained that the high cost of the auction had left a “bitter aftertaste” and would sap the ability of network operators to invest in costly network upgrades.

But it will still be able to plow 5 billion euros ($5.6 billion) this year into building out its network infrastructure, technology chief Claudia Nemat told the same briefing.

Germany lags countries like South Korea and the United States in rolling out 5G services.

Also on Wednesday, Vodafone said it is switching on its 5G network in seven U.K. cities and would continue to invest in rolling out 5G with the aim of reaching at least eight million consumers by 2021.

HUAWEI CUSTOMER

Deutsche Telekom partnered with Huawei Technologies in a Berlin 5G trial now being opened up to users, despite calls by the United States on its allies to bar the Chinese network vendor on national security grounds.

Instead of imposing blanket bans, Germany has toughened security rules on all network vendors. Deutsche Telekom, for its part, is conducting an ongoing review of its vendor strategy and said it was in close touch with regulators and the government on the matter.

“The most important criterion is network security,” said Nemat. “And the most important statement to make here is that we should not depend on one vendor.”

Germany’s three main network vendors are Huawei customers and, industry sources say all are keen to build on their existing relationship with the Chinese vendor as they adopt 5G. The alternative, of ripping and replacing existing gear, could set back rollouts by years and cost billions, they warn.

CONSUMER FOCUS

Deutsche Telekom is making 5G-enabled devices available to early adopters with immediate effect, offering the Samsung Galaxy S10 5G smartphone for 900 euros ($1,017) as part of its all-you-can-use data package.

The unlimited data plan will be priced at 85 euros a month.

It is also marketing a mobile 5G hotspot hub from HTC, which offers speeds of up to 1 gigabyte per second and can run up to 20 devices, at a price of 556 euros, plus a 75 euro monthly fee for unlimited data use.

“We are doing this for the people who want to be there at the very start,” said Michael Hagspihl, head of consumer business.

Deutsche Telekom will bring 300 5G-enabled antennas into service this year, making use of its newly acquired 3.5 Gigahertz spectrum that is most suited to urban coverage.

More broadly, the company will continue to build 2,000 new masts per year, bringing the total to 36,000 by the end of 2021, as it strives to meet coverage requirements for its existing 4G network set by the network regulator, said Woessner.

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