SHENZHEN, March 23 (Xinhua) -- Scientists from China, Germany and Canada have built two international cooperation platforms on neuroscience in the southern Chinese municipality of Shenzhen, the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology (SIAT) of China Academy of Sciences said Saturday.
The platforms were established to further allure top-level talent and innovation resources in neuroscience to the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, said the institute.
One of the platforms is a joint laboratory on researching the principles and mechanisms of neural plasticity for the development of biopharmaceutical and the health industry. The lab is led by Erwin Neher, a German physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1991.
Such international cooperation platforms provide young researchers with a more free and relaxed environment, which will promote more original scientific achievements, said Neher.
The lab has a team of 30 full-time researchers so far and the number will increase to 50 by the end of 2019, according to Zhu Yingjie, a researcher at the lab.
The other platform is jointly established by SIAT and the University of British Columbia in Canada. It is dedicated to frontier research and making technological breakthroughs in brain science, especially those in neurological and mental disorders.
"Our goal is to aggregate global innovation resources and talent, and exchange innovative ideas in brain science," said Yang Jianhua, an official from SIAT.
As China's tech hub, Shenzhen aims to build itself into an international center for brain science research and has mapped out specific development plans.
NANJING, March 21 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese research team has successfully realized the regulation and encoding of photons, a step toward producing photonic chips, next-generation technology believed to be faster and more power-efficient than today's semiconductor electronic chips.
The research team was led by Professor Jiang Liyong of Nanjing University of Science and Technology in eastern China's Jiangsu Province.
Semiconductor electronic chips have a "glass ceiling" that keeps them from achieving higher storage density and computing speed, as restricted by the material's physical law, making all electron motions uncertain, Jiang said.
"Using photonic chips as an information carrier can break the restriction," Jiang said.
However, to realize the photonic chips, scientists have to "tame" the photons first, giving them the functions of coding, storage and computing, he said.
Jiang's team developed a method called "in-plane coherent control" making it possible to integrate photons in nano-scale units.
He said their study showed that the photon control method could be applied in fields like integrated optical communication and micro-nano display and sensing.
The research result was published in the latest issue of Light: Science & Applications, a top international journal in the field of optics and photonics.
GUANGZHOU, March 20 (Xinhua) -- A power distribution room built with 3D printing technology has started operation in Guangzhou, capital of southern China's Guangdong Province.
The electrical room, the first of its kind nationwide, measures 12.1 meters long, 4.5 meters wide and 4.6 meters high. It was built using a 3D printer according to a digital 3D model, said Wu Xiaofei with the power supply bureau in Guangzhou.
Wu said construction of the room started last December and took a total of 35 days to complete, cutting the normal construction time by 30 percent.
The printer only required one operator and two other workers to assist with the printing, while manual construction of the room usually requires more than five workers, he added.
Besides, the printer reduced the dust and waste produced during the construction.
3D printing technology will be used as an efficient, intelligent and eco-friendly way for construction as Guangzhou is ramping up efforts to expand its power supply networks, Wu said.
WASHIGNTON, March 20 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists developed robotic system inspired by a colony of ants that can collectively achieve complex tasks like gathering large prey.
The study published on Wednesday in the journal Science Robotics described the nanorobots fleet that have demonstrated potential for in-body diagnosis and treatment at the cellular or even molecular level.
Xie Hui, a professor of Harbin Institute of Technology, who led the study, told Xinhua that a single robot is two micrometers in its diameter, 40 times smaller than a hair, thus capable of running through blood capillaries.
The peanut-shaped iron microrobots can be energized by an alternating magnetic field, offering high flexibility to collectively perform multiple tasks in a confined environment, according to the study.
By tuning the frequency of the rotating magnetic field and its polarization in three-dimensional space, the researchers obtained a series of well-controlled, fast, and reversible transformations, Xie said.
Those formations include liquid, chain, vortex and ribbon. They can form narrow paths or channels to deliver heavy loads beyond a single robot's capability.
Xie said the robotic swarm might be used to identify and attack pathological cells or even stay inside the body for health monitoring in the future, providing a new tool for early-stage detection and treatment.
