News on China's scientific and technological development.

t2contra said:

I was looking for some news on scientific and technological development but was disappointed.

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no_name said:

I remember there was a thread about Sansha development somewhere but couldn't find it.

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A pilot project on obtaining oil from complex geological structures achieved satisfactory results in northwestern China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) said Tuesday.

Data showed that the oil-recovery rate in the testing block was raised by 10.3 percent and would be further lifted by up to 12.1 percent, according to the country's largest oil and gas producer.

This marks a breakthrough in the application of polymer flooding in conglomerate layers, a key technique that will bolster oil production, said a spokesman for CNPC.

Following the project, the oil giant will expand the test zone and strengthen efforts to develop Dzungarian Basin, China's major oil and gas reservoir with an estimated 8.6 billion tonnes of crude oil reserves and 2.1 trillion cubic meters of gas reserves.

The pilot project, initiated in 2005, aimed at solving technical problems occurring in drilling and production, and researchers have patented four technical inventions so far in the experiments, according to the CNPC.

Xinjiang is CNPC's major focus for oil and gas exploitation, as the energy-rich region accounts for over one-quarter of China's total onshore reserves.

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The prototype of 5-mw wind turbine generator, independently developed by CSIC (China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation), was successfully produced in the assembly production base of Chongqing Haizhuang Windpower Equipment Co., Ltd. on July 27.

This independently developed WTG (Wind Turbine Generator), with the largest rotor diameter in China and the world’s lightest head and highest electricity output among current WTGs of the same kind, signed a tremendous accomplishment of transition and promotion of Chongqing’s equipment industry.

This WTG is the only scientific and technological supporting plan authorized by the Ministry of Science and Technology. It owns 32 national patented technologies and has a complete industry chain involving manufacture of key components such as blade, gear case, generator, control system, hub, tower and lubrication system, and all of these components are made by CSIC.

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The University of Leeds and the Chinese Academy of Sciences have teamed up to create a joint research institute to develop next generation energy storage systems.

Finding more effective and efficient ways to store energy is becoming increasingly important to deal with the problem of peak demand on electricity grids. The ability to store excess energy generated from wind or solar generation is also a pressing problem.

People use a wide variety of technologies to store energy, for example batteries, pumped hydro power plants and compressed air energy storage systems. But these all have several drawbacks. Batteries often are expensive and have a short life-span. Pumped storage plants, such as Dinorwic in North Wales, UK, pump water uphill into a reservoir or lake. They later release the water downhill to drive turbines when electricity demand is high. But these systems are very expensive and require special geological sites, as do compressed air systems.

The new institute will focus on thermal and mechanical based energy storage technologies which promise to overcome many of these problems. Thermal energy accounts for about 90% global spending on energy; it makes sense to find ways to store energy in the same form as which you want to use it. Nearly 50 researchers will work on research projects with an overall budget of £4 million. The projects will develop and test new materials and processes for energy storage and explore methods for transferring and using energy more efficiently in both domestic setting and industry.

The joint research institute is a collaboration between the Institute of Particle Science & Engineering at the University of Leeds and the Institute of Process Engineering (IPE) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). The two partners have worked together on projects for many years, but this is the first time they have agreed to coordinate and combine their resources.

Leeds has expert researchers in nanostructured energy storage materials, thermal and mechanical based energy storage technologies, and heat transfer fluids. IPE will make it easier to get new commercial solutions to market with its experience in integrating energy storage technologies with renewables and industrial processes, and its knowledge on how to scale-up processes and pilot prototype systems.

Speaking at the formal opening of the Institute in Beijing, on 25 July 2012, Professor Andrew Bell from the University of Leeds, said: “Over the years we have developed highly successful collaborations with our colleagues at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The University of Leeds is delighted to combine our areas of research expertise through this joint institute which will create a highly competitive platform for effective and substantial collaborations in advanced energy storage science and engineering.”

According to University of Leeds’ Professor Yulong Ding, the first director of the joint research institute, the initiative will help researchers to access funding opportunities in China, the UK, EU and other international sources.

“This is an exciting and long-term opportunity which will help to secure our research into novel energy storage technologies over both the medium and long term. We aim to recruit high quality postgraduate students, produce joint publications and joint intellectual property and drive knowledge transfer.

We have already demonstrated that a collaborating platform is crucial to attract funding from UK, Chinese and multi-national companies and, once funding is obtained, to run the projects subsequently in an easier and effective manner,” he said.

“The joint research combines the strengths of the two technically complementary organisations, which will promote the fast transfer of knowledge in the energy storage area and drive new technologies out of the lab and into the market,” said Professor Suojiang Zhang, Director of Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

One of the first activities of the joint institute will be to set up a scheme which will allow PhD students in the Institute to move between Leeds and Beijing. This exchange programme will allow the students to spend time in the different labs to progress their research and benefit from the expertise and facilities of the two partner organisations.

The joint research institute has some over 45 researchers working on over 20 projects funded by the UK’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, China Natural Science Foundation, the Chinese Ministry of Science & Technology, Highview Power Storage Ltd (UK), BaoSteel (China) and AnSteel (China).

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China's first government-backed icebreaker project for polar expeditions officially entered the implementation phase when a basic design contract was signed Tuesday.

The contract was signed by the Chinese Arctic and Antarctic Administration (CAA) under the State Oceanic Administration (SOA), the Polar Research Institute of China and the Finland-based Aker Arctic Technology Inc., which will participate in the design of the icebreaker.

The new 8,000-tonne vessel, China's second after the Ukraine-built Xuelong, will have an endurance of 20,000 nautical miles and be capable of breaking ice with a thickness of 1.5 meters, sources with the SOA said.

Moreover, it will be designed to accommodate 90 people and two helicopters, with an overall length of 120 meters, maximum breadth of 22 meters and draught of 8.5 meters.

"With a 580-square-meter lab and a 700-square-meter deck, the ship will provide enough space for scientific research in various fields," said Qu Tanzhou, director of the CAA.

According to the SOA, the new vessel, which will be built in China, is expected to greatly boost the country's expedition capacities in polar and oceanic regions.

Due for operation in 2014, the new icebreaker will join the Xuelong in polar expeditions.

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Photoacoustic tomography (PAT) is a novel biomedical imaging modality that combines the advantages of excellent optical contrast with high ultrasonic spatial resolution at great depth. It has found broad preclinical and clinical applications such as the imaging of tumor angiogenesis, hypoxia, sentinel lymph nodes, as well as cardiovascular atherosclerosis.

Traditionally, the acquisition of real-time high-resolution images requires a densely packed high-frequency ultrasonic array. However, due to challenges in the fabrication of such arrays, this kind of approach can be very expensive and is not accessible to many researchers.

Scientists at Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences(SIAT), have recently developed a new reconstruction algorithm - compressed sensing photoacoustic reconstruction with partially known support - that may provide an alternative approach for high-speed high-resolution PAT.

Compared with traditional PAT reconstruction, this novel reconstruction strategy can recover signals at a significantly reduced spatial sampling frequency. As a result, high quality PAT images can be obtained with very sparsely distributed ultrasonic transducer elements.

This newly developed approach has been validated with PAT images of both human and small animals in vivo. Further development of such novel reconstruction strategies will ultimately enable low-cost, high-speed PAT for various biomedical applications.

The research results have been published in the 16 July, 2012 issue of Optics Express...

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The first bio-inspired microrobot capable of not just walking on water like the water strider – but continuously jumping up and down like a real water strider – now is a reality. Scientists reported development of the agile microrobot, which could use its jumping ability to avoid obstacles on reconnaissance or other missions, in

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Qinmin Pan and colleagues explain that scientists have reported a number of advances toward tiny robots that can walk on water. Such robots could skim across lakes and other bodies of water to monitor water quality or act as tiny spies. However, even the most advanced designs – including one from Pan's team last year – can only walk on water.

Pan notes that real water striders actually leap. Making a jumping robot is difficult because the downward force needed to propel it into the air usually pushes the legs through the water's surface. Pan's group looked for novel mechanisms and materials to build a true water-striding robot.

Using porous, super water-repellant nickel foam to fabricate the three supporting and two jumping legs, the group made a robot that could leap more than 5.5 inches, despite weighing as much as 1,100 water striders. In experiments, the robot could jump nearly 14 inches forward – more than twice its own length – leaving the water at about 3.6 miles per hour.

The authors report that the ability to leap will make the bio-inspired microrobot more agile and better able to avoid obstacles it encounters on the water's surface.

The authors acknowledge funding from the State Key Laboratory of Robotics and System of Harbin Institute of Technology and the National Natural Science Foundation of China.

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Physicists at The University of Texas at Austin, in collaboration with colleagues in Taiwan and China, have developed the world's smallest semiconductor laser, a breakthrough for emerging photonic technology with applications from computing to medicine.

The scientists report their efforts in this week's Science. Miniaturization of semiconductor lasers is key for the development of faster, smaller and lower energy photon-based technologies, such as ultrafast computer chips; highly sensitive biosensors for detecting, treating and studying disease; and next-generation communication technologies.

Such photonic devices could use nanolasers to generate optical signals and transmit information, and have the potential to replace electronic circuits. But the size and performance of photonic devices have been restricted by what's known as the three-dimensional optical diffraction limit. "We have developed a nanolaser device that operates well below the 3-D diffraction limit," said Chih-Kang "Ken" Shih, professor of physics at The University of Texas at Austin.

"We believe our research could have a large impact on nanoscale technologies." In the current paper, Shih and his colleagues report the first operation of a continuous-wave, low-threshold laser below the 3-D diffraction limit. When fired, the nanolaser emits a green light. The laser is too small to be visible to the naked eye.

The device is constructed of a gallium nitride nanorod that is partially filled with indium gallium nitride. Both alloys are semiconductors used commonly in LEDs. The nanorod is placed on top of a thin insulating layer of silicon that in turn covers a layer of silver film that is smooth at the atomic level

It's a material that the Shih lab has been perfecting for more than 15 years. That "atomic smoothness" is key to building photonic devices that don't scatter and lose plasmons, which are waves of electrons that can be used to move large amounts of data.

"Atomically smooth plasmonic structures are highly desirable building blocks for applications with low loss of data," said Shih. Nanolasers such as this could provide for the development of chips where all processes are contained on the chip, so-called "on-chip" communication systems.

This would prevent heat gains and information loss typically associated with electronic devices that pass data between multiple chips. "Size mismatches between electronics and photonics have been a huge barrier to realize on-chip optical communications and computing systems," said Shangjr Gwo, professor at National Tsing Hua University in Taiwain and a former doctoral student of Shih's.

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