News on China's scientific and technological development.

Jeff Head said:

No problem. None of that broaches oj the issues I was trying to avoid...which issues invariably lead to argument, high emotion, moderation, warnings, etc., etc.

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completely agreed! That's I don't usually participate in that kind of discussion and support the no-politics policy at SD. You won't be able to convince anyone...

Jeff Head said:

This is imply not so, vesicles. Numerous companies have large R&D efforts that are focused on the theoretical, just as I explained earlier.

Pharmaceuticals are a great example. I have a nephew who recently got his Doctorate in Pharmaceutical studies. He was immediately hired...at a very good pay...by a private company to do that type of research and he is loving it.

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First of all, Congratulations to your nephew! Good for him to be able to do what he loves to do. That is the most important thing!

Most of the R&D efforts by big companies aim to apply very mature theories and ideas and intend to use their vast resources to generate a product as soon as possible. This kind of research is vastly different from purely theoretical work done in academia. For instance, time travel is being active researched in academia now. I am sure Boeing would not allow its talented and highly paid researchers to "waste time and money" on that now. that is what I am talking about. The long-term research vs short-term research.

Academia typically focuses on the long shots, where you need a lot of patience, time and money to get anything out of it. The most dangerous thing about these projects is the unpredictability. You would be considered lucky if you can get one project working out of 100-1000 projects that you invest in. And then there is the time factor. it might take you 100 years to work it out. No company can afford to wait that long. The industry typically focuses on the short-term projects. Because the theories behind these projects are typically very mature, the chance of failing is relatively small although many R&D projects do fail. However, companies can focus their resources (manpower and money) on a short-term goal and achieve amazing results. Take pharmaceutical companies for instance, drug discovery and screening is their strength. they can finish screening hundreds of thousands of small molecules and get some amazing positive hits within a couple years. It would take us centuries to do the same thing, let alone that it would be so difficult for us in academia to get a grant to do that...

And the industry and academia can achieve their own goals independently without interacting with each other. Because the goal is different, how each sector operates is also vastly different. I bet your nephew was in for a shock when he began working at the company. He's been so used to how academic labs work. He would have to do a lot of adjustment in the company. Mainly, how his ideas would be shot down, not because they are not brilliant but because it might take too long to see if it works... That's the difference in culture between industry and academia.

Jeff Head said:

There is also a HUGE role for academia. Many government programs and many commercial programs issue grants for this type of study in all typed of field to academia.

My own experience with Chordoma Cancer at MD Anderson in Houston, TX is a great example of the Academic, the Commercial, and the Public sector all working together. The results (in my case) or without question., The best equipment, the best care, and the best treatment in the world came out of a fusion of all three.

]As I stated above, most successful comp[anise realize this and account for it oin their own research departments which have theoretical departments, and in the grants they issue for that type of research.

As stated, there are many that are not too. I am not sure that "Most" even qualifies overall. Perhaps in your own specialty this is true...but not in all.

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I agree that it works wonders when all the sectors work together harmoniously. The MD Anderson is actually more complicated that what you can see on the surface. Most of the research done at MD Anderson is actually "translational", meaning that they mostly translate mature theories into clinical treatments and drugs. This is fantastic. However, officials at MDACC are seriously worried about the kind of training they provide to the students and postdocs in the labs at MDACC. Since most of these labs do not do hard-core science, the students and postdocs are not getting proper training. What they do all day is screening drugs. If they allow this to go on, MDACC will go downhill because they will lose their ability to innovate. Once the mature theories run dry, they would have to depend on other institutions to feed them innovative ideas. Thus, they implemented a series of policies to "force" students and postdocs into getting more exposure to hard-core science. So in a sense, MDACC is more like a big company, while Baylor College of Medicine and UT medical school are more like academic institutions (both focus more on hard-core science than translational stuff), although both also have amazing clinical programs.

I realize that I am biased against industry. I appreciate what the industry does. As I mentioned before, without industry's R&D programs, all the amazing ideas will stay simply as ideas on black boards and in published papers. Our civilization develops to what it is now because these innovative R&D programs in companies manage to translate empty ideas into solid products that impact our lives. However, my point is I believe that the industry and academia should stay separate as much as possible. The industry R&D should focus on short-term research while academia should focus on the long shots or crazy ideas. The two work the best when without the influence from the other side, IMHO.

Bltizo said:

I'm a little confused as to why there's so much uproar over this. From what I understand the reserachers were quite explicitly clear that this was never intended to directly lead to anything outside the lab (i.e.: clinical use) and certainly not implanted in any way given the embryos were incapable of leading to live births in the first place.

I think so long as this kind of technique doesn't result in any live births and/or clinical use without extensive debate and establishment of a normal operational standard then this kind of research shouldn't be a problem.

I can't help but feel the controversy surrounding this case is a little premature.

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If it is not done by the Chinese, it will be done by some other countries in a matter of time. There have been medical research that pushed the boundaries and are more dangerous. Genetic modification has always been a hot moral relativism issue.

Thanks Jeff didn't realise already posted

Next Big Future

China moving towards approving a dozen walk away safe 105 MW high temperature pebble bed reactor modules
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at Ruijin city in China's Jiangxi province has passed a preliminary feasibility review, China Nuclear Engineering Corporation (CNEC) recently announced.

The Jiangxi provincial development and reform commission has already given the go-ahead to begin preliminary work at Ruijin and construction of the reactors is expected to start in 2017, with grid connection in 2021

The design of the Ruijin HTRs is based on the smaller demonstration HTR-PM under construction at Shidaowan near Weihai city in Shandong province. That plant will initially comprise twin HTR-PM reactor modules driving a single 210 MWe steam turbine. Construction started in late 2012. CNEC said civil construction work on the HTR-PM is nearing completion and equipment installation would soon begin. The demonstration unit is scheduled to start commercial operation in late 2017.







Work on the turbine building's foundation is under way (Image: SNPTC) The CAP1400 is an enlarged version of the AP1000 pressurized water reactor developed from the Westinghouse original by SNPTC with consulting input from the Toshiba-owned company. As one of China's 16 strategic projects under its National Science and Technology Development Plan, the CAP1400 is intended to be deployed in large numbers across the country. The reactor design may also be exported.

2.

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However, site preparations for the units are well advanced with the pouring of concrete for the foundations of the first unit's conventional island having now begun.

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Huaneng Group's Shidaowan site is part of a larger Rongcheng Nuclear Power Industrial Park, at which two prototype 105 MWe HTR-PM small modular reactors are already under construction.

SOURCE- World Nuclear News

This must be four years after CREE developed the first.

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Scientists Develop 1200V/15A and 1700V/8A SiC MOSFET Devices

Apr 28, 2015

SiC (Silicon Carbide) is the third-generation semiconductor materials. Because of its features such as wide band gap, high critical breakdown electric field and high load saturated density of particle flow, SiC has a predominant applicable value in military and astronautical field, especially in the photoelectric components with the properties of high temperature, high frequency and high power. It gradually replaces the components made from modern silicon and GaAs. Therefore, SiC power device, especially SiC MOSFET (Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor Field-Effect Transistor) device, is the core technology of the next generation of high power electronic devices.
Recently, based on the 4-inch silicon technology platform, the SiC Power Devices Research Team at the Microwave Devices and Integrated Circuits Department of the Institute of Microelectronics of Chinese Academy of Sciences (IMECAS) developed 1200V/15A and 1700V/8A SiC MOSFET devices, which laid a solid foundation for the development of high-performance SiC power devices with Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor (IGBT) in the future.
Figure 2 is the characteristic curve of the 1200V/15A SiC MOSFET device. The output current is 10A when the VDS is 10V and the VGS is 22V and it's up to 15A when the VDS is 20V and the VGS is 22V. The reverse voltage is up to 1353V when the drain current is 100nA. Figure 3 is the characteristic curve of the 1700V/8A SiC MOSFET device. The output current is 5A when the VDS is 5V and the VGS is 22V and it's up to 8A when the VDS is 13V and the VGS is 22V. The reverse voltage is up to 1900V when the drain current is 20nA.

Looks as if Infineon already has several products in the market utilizing Silicon Carbide technology.

'China brain' project seeks military funding as Baidu makes artificial intelligence plans
Robin Li wants China to become a world leader in artificial intelligence




Baidu founder Robin Li Yanhong speaks to reporters at the Great Hall of the People about his plans to develop artificial intelligence. Photo: Simon Song
Robin Li Yanhong, the founder and chief executive of online search giant Baidu, is looking to the nation's military to support efforts which may make the mainland the world leader in developing artificial intelligence (AI) systems.

One of the country's wealthiest people, Li has proposed in his capacity as a delegate to the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) that the mainland establish the "China Brain" project.

Li said the proposed project would be a massive, "state-level" initiative that could be comparable to how the Apollo space programme was undertaken by the United States to land the first humans on the moon in 1969.

He told reporters on the sidelines of the CPPCC in Beijing that the military was welcome to join the project because it was a sector with extensive funding resources that had played a significant role in technology innovation and had huge demand for the latest hi-tech advances.

American computer scientist John McCarthy coined the term "artificial intelligence" in 1955, defining AI as "the science and engineering of making intelligent machines".



Under Li's proposal, the China Brain project would focus on specific research areas: human-machine interaction, so-called big data analysis, automated driving, smart medical diagnosis, smart drones and robotics technologies for both military and civilian use.

"The government should support capable companies in building an open platform offering AI-related basic resources and public services," he said.

In addition, Li proposed that the platform "be kept open and competitive, rather than being made only available to select research institutes".

"A market mechanism should help transform AI-related research into actual results and products, and push forward integration and innovation in traditional industry, the service sector and the military," he said.



Baidu, the dominant provider of online search services on the mainland, has already accelerated its AI efforts with the recruitment last year of former Google computer scientist Andrew Ng.

A long-time researcher at Stanford University whose family is from Hong Kong, Ng founded Google's own AI initiative called "Google Brain" in 2011. He now serves as Baidu's chief scientist based in San Francisco.

"Whoever wins artificial intelligence will win the internet in China and around the world. Baidu has the best shot to make it work," Ng said in a Bloomberg report last October.

Baidu last year also hired Zhang Yaqin, who helped Microsoft build on the mainland the software giant's biggest technology research operation outside the US. He was appointed Baidu's president for new business.

Ricky Lai, a research analyst at Guotai Junan International, has described Baidu's new recruits as part of the company's goal to "enter untapped markets and expand existing operations".

SamuraiBlue said:

Looks as if Infineon already has several products in the market utilizing Silicon Carbide technology.

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I already knew. But CREE was first. I would be gobsmacked if China was second ahead of Japanese companies. DJI is an outlier. When it came on the scene, how many people here including me believed it was a Chinese company, but rather a Japanese or Silicon Valley company? It was unthinkable for a China to be able to punch above its weight in consumer electronic products.

t2contra said:

I already knew. But CREE was first. I would be gobsmacked if China was second ahead of Japanese companies. DJI is an outlier. When it came on the scene, how many people here including me believed it was a Chinese company, but rather a Japanese or Silicon Valley company? It was unthinkable for a China to be able to punch above its weight in consumer electronic products.

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Huh? Infineon is a Chinese company? Since when?

Infineon is a German company which spinned out from Siemens.