News on China's scientific and technological development.

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Chinese Biologists Find Duckweed to Tackle Water Pollution


Jun 25, 2015


Biologists have found a strain of duckweed that can effectively purify polluted water and transform nitric oxide into biological fertilizer, a researcher told Xinhua on Wednesday.

A research team lead by Zhao Hai, with the Chengdu Institute of Biology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, identified the duckweed species from more than 800 samples collected across the world in nine years.

Should this duckweed be planted in just 1 percent of China's lakes and ponds, it could generate 1.72 million tons of ethanol annually, worth 10.3 billion yuan (1.68 billion U.S. dollars). Meanwhile, it can reduce emissions of carbon dioxide by 10 million tons, said Zhao.

More than 70 percent of China's rivers and lakes are polluted and reducing aquatic nitric oxide content would go some way to addressing this, he said.

Duckweed, the smallest aquatic flowering plant in the world, absorbs a high level of nitric and phosphide and is quite effective in dealing with heavy metal pollution, said Zhao.
After six days of duckweed treatment, wastewater passes the top level pollutant discharge standard, he said.

The team has applied for a national invention patent for the duckweed system. (Xinhua)
 

A.Man

Major
Chinese Tech Companies Alibaba, Xiaomi and Tencent Best American Counterparts In New MIT Report
By
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[email protected] on June 25 2015 1:18 PM EDT

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alibaba-group-hq-nov-10-2014.png

Alibaba placed No. 4 in the MIT Technology Review's “50 Smartest Companies of 2015." Here, riders on a double bicycle pass a logo of Alibaba Group at the company’s headquarters on the outskirts of Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, Nov. 10, 2014. Reuters/Aly Song
China’s biggest tech companies have made a splash in international markets in recent years. Now, according to the Massachusetts Institue of Technology, a number of China’s homegrown innovators have now bested several of their Western counterparts to become some of the smartest companies in 2015.

In MIT’s
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” Chinese tech powerhouses Xiaomi, Alibaba and Tencent not only outdid their Western competition but also cracked the top 10 in the publication's “50 Smartest Companies of 2015” list. Placing at No. 2, Xiaomi began as a smartphone vendor but has since grown its business
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its reputation as a cut-rate version of Apple (which also made the list at No. 16). Xiaomi has taken growth seriously and branched out of just smartphones and into software, Internet TV and international markets.

Alibaba, the brainchild of eccentric teacher-turned-CEO Jack Ma, was on the forefront of China’s move to e-commerce and digitization of consumerism. Alibaba is often compared with Jeff Bezos’ Amazon and dubbed China’s Amazon. However, Alibaba’s recent growth
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for changing Amazon's description to America’s Alibaba. Alibaba has earned its reputation as the world’s largest online retailer and has rolled out its own payment and banking service, called Alipay. Alibaba rode the hype surrounding its company into its IPO, which raised a record-setting $25 billion.

Tencent came in at No. 7, after becoming the parent company to China’s most-used Internet service portal. The Shenzhen-based company outranks other international social media companies like Facebook, Snapchat and Japanese messaging app Line, which ranked No. 29, No. 47 and No. 37, respectively. Tencent has amassed more than 549 million active monthly users on its messaging services WeChat and Weixin, which still threatens the status of popular Chinese-owned Weibo microblogging service.

The rankings come after former Silicon Valley figure and 2016 presidential candidate Carly Fiorina criticized the Chinese for not being imaginative or entrepreneurial. “[Chinese people] are not terribly imaginative. They’re not entrepreneurial, they don’t innovate, that is why they are stealing our intellectual property,” Fiorina
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speaking to Iowa political blog Caffeinated Thoughts. “I’ve been doing business with the Chinese for decades, and I will tell you that, yeah, the Chinese can take a test, but what they can’t do is innovate.”

The comments, which were met with some backlash, also had some support among some Chinese. However, as China continues to shift away from a manufacturing economy, its citizens are increasingly proving themselves to be entrepreneurs and innovators.
 

broadsword

Brigadier
BTW, the author Michelle FlorCruz is the daughter of Jaime Florcruz, a prominent figure among foreign journalists in China before his retirement earlier this year. He could be trusted to give a more balanced view of China.
 

broadsword

Brigadier
Can someone translate the percentages?

China develops world's most advanced traction technique for high-speed rail

(
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) June 24, 2015

FOREIGN201506241706000125079247949.jpg

Diagram of core parts on CRH380A high speed rail. (Photo/China Economic Weekly)
11 years' persistence, over 10 million tests, 150G accumulated data, and 100 million yuan investment… CSR Zhuzhou Institute Co. Ltd has mastered the traction technique of IPMSM (Interior Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motor).

With the proprietary intellectual property right of this system, Chinese high-speed rail has gained another advantage on the market.

On May 16, 2015, IPMSM was successfully put into use in subway line 1 in Changsha, marking the first time for the traction system of IPMSM to be used in in China.

Ding Rongjun, an academician of Chinese Academy of Engineering and the general manager of Zhuzhou Insititute, says that Zhuzhou will start production of the 690 kW traction system of IPMSM, which can be used on high speed trains running 500 kilometers per hour.

This signifies that China is now one of the few countries in the world that have mastered the technique of IPMSM for high-speed rail.

"China's era of 'traction system of IPMSM' for rail transportation has finally come," said Ding.
 

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Note : Long grain rice is lower in glycemic index

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Geneticists reveal what makes great rice

Gene responsible for long grains and pleasing texture can now be bred into existing varieties without sacrificing yield.

06 July 2015
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Xiangdong Fu

Breeders in China have discovered the secret for creating rice varieties that could improve breakfast, lunch and dinner for millions of people in Asia. Two teams of molecular geneticists, working independently, have identified a gene that controls both shape and texture and can be selected for without sacrificing the yield of the crop.

“The implications are enormous,” says Susan McCouch, a rice geneticist at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, who was not involved in either study. “The rice-breeding community has had this problem — they have been able to improve yield or quality, but almost never simultaneously.”
In Southeast Asia, where up to 76% of the caloric intake comes from rice, savvy shoppers know what to look for in the grain.
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is transparent; opaque spots indicate a disagreeable chalky taste. And for many, the best rice has long, slender grains. “This shape is associated with quality,” says Xiangdong Fu, a geneticist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing and the senior author of one of the studies
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.


Consumers will pay so much more for quality that breeders in some countries have been prepared to sacrifice yield to create elite varieties. A grain-improving gene in an Indian favourite, Basmati, comes with a 14% decrease in yield. But Chinese farmers will often accept lower quality to keep yields high.

Two papers published on 6 July in Nature Genetics
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,
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identify a gene that is associated both with long, slender shape and with reduced chalkiness — and can be bred into rice lines little or no cost in terms of yield.
Shape shifter

The gene can induce radical changes in shape by promoting longitudinal cell division over transverse cell division. The more copies of a particular version — or allele — of the gene that a variety has of the gene that a variety has, the longer the grain. The gene is dominant, which makes it useful for creating hybrid varieties. A neighbouring gene, which codes for a protein involved in transcribing DNA into RNA, represses the effect but can be disabled.

The real heroes in the story are the breeders, says McCouch. The gene, known as both GL7 and GW7, is highly expressed in two US varieties, as well as in a new Chinese line called TaifengA. “The breeders have already accomplished this; they don’t need these people doing the molecular genetics.”

But now that the miracle gene has been identified, it can be manipulated with advanced tools. “There are already some varieties that exist in the Chinese market that contain these alleles,” says Guosheng Xiong at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Shenzhen and an author of one of the papers
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. “But with this knowledge, we can introduce it to some varieties that have good taste and cooking qualities but don’t look good.”

Other staple foods are roughly the same throughout the world, but preferences for rice size, shape and flavour vary widely from country to country. The Japanese famously like their rice short, fat and sticky, which explains why their breeders have bred out a second copy of GL7 in a variety introduced from the Americas.

But irrespective of local preference, hardly anyone likes chalkiness. Chalky rice also breaks easily, reducing the value of a crop and the amount a rice that a farmer can earn in a year.
In whatever line it is included, the gene will improve the look and taste of bulk Chinese rice. “It will be much more beautiful and better tasting,” says Fu. And that is no small accomplishment for a country where many eat rice three meals a day, according to McCouch. “It will bring pleasure to some of the world’s poorest people,” she says.
 
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