News on China's scientific and technological development.

Li Mingzhou, a young associate professor at Sichuan Agricultural University, was given a second-level professorship due to his work on pig genes after just two years of teaching, an unprecedented move for the school, reports Chengdu Economic Daily.

Li's research on the genetic basis of obesity in pigs is what brought him such a quick promotion. Four years ago, he joined a research project on pig fat and muscle tissues that was jointly conducted by more than 50 researchers from 12 research institutes. Li unexpectedly found a relationship between obesity and the fat that lies between pigs' muscle tissues.

His findings have been published in Nature Communications, a multidisciplinary scientific journal published by Nature Publishing Group. To Li's surprise, his essay was downloaded 2,808 times in a single day, above the high-end of the average 1,900 to 2,800 downloads for other articles in the journal.

Many medical researchers and experts see Li's work as a significant contribution to the study of obesity in people, since pigs are similar to humans in their metabolism, cardiovascular system, organ sizes and genes.

Chinese regulations require that associate professors teach for five years and record solid academic performance before winning promotions, according to Liu Yinggao, director of the personnel division at Li's school. He added that the school has four levels of classification for professors.

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Chinese researchers have identified a key gene in rice that could enhance both quality and productivity of rice at the same time, as they reported in the journal Nature Genetics on Sunday.

While studying the Basmati rice from Pakistan that is world famous for its high quality, Fu Xiangdong at Chinese Academy of Sciences and his colleagues found a gene named GW8 could influence the quality of rice.

The gene could improve the shape and color of rice grain, enhancing its quality of appearance. On the other hand, it could also change the arrangement of starch inside the grain, enhancing its quality for eating.

Further study shows that the GW8 gene also exists in some types of high yield rice grown in China. However, it's a different variant of that gene, whose major effect is not on quality, but on the grain weight, thus enhancing the productivity of rice.

The team then identified a third variant of the gene. "We found another variant of GW8, which could combine the advantages of those two variants that respectively influences quality and productivity," Fu told Xinhua in a telephone interview.

"Therefore the new variant could enhance the quality and productivity of rice at the same time." The superiority of the new variant of GW8 gene was supported by field experiments. If it is introduced into the Basmati rice, it could increase its productivity by 14 percent, while the quality remains the same.

And if it is introduced into the high yield rice in China, it could significantly enhance the quality of rice grains, while its productivity remains the same.

Fu said that this discovery could lead to new varieties of rice that would have outstanding performance in both quality and productivity.

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Sulfate and heavy metals are two main types of pollution in most of the mining areas. It is noted that sulfide produced from microbial sulfate reduction can combine heavy metals to form precipitates, which has become an important method for treatment of heavy metal waste water. However, the lack of organic carbon source in most mining areas restricts microbial sulfate reduction.

Hence, exploring an approach for sulfate reduction without organic carbon becomes urgent and significant. Prof. LI Daping’ team from Key Laboratory of Environmental and Applied Microbiology, Chengdu Institute of Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, has long been engaged in biotransformation of nitrogen and sulfur in bio-electrochemical systems (BESs). Recently, they developed a novel method for sulfate reduction with electrons directly derived from electrodes in a BES.

According to the findings of researches, microbial sulfate reduction was achieved with polarizable electrode (- 400 mV vs. Ag/AgCl) as sole electron donor. More importantly, it revealed that the sulfate-reducing bacteria (eg. Geobacter sp. and Desulfobulbus propionicus) could directly accept electrons from electrodes without electron shuttles or hydrogen production. The results provide a new approach for sulfate reduction and heavy metal wastewater treatment with the lack of organic carbon source.

This research entitled “Sulfate reduction with electrons directly derived from electrodes in bioelectrochemical systems” has just been published in Electrochemistry Communication

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Whether used in telescopes or optoelectronic communications, infrared detectors must be continuously cooled to avoid being overwhelmed by stray thermal radiation. Now, a team of researchers from Peking University, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Duke University (USA) is harnessing the remarkable properties of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) to create highly sensitive, "uncooled" photovoltaic infrared detectors.

This new type of detector, which the team describes in a paper published in the Optical Society's (OSA) open-access journal Optical Materials Express, may prove useful for industrial, military, manufacturing, optical communications, and scientific applications.

Carbon nanotubes are known for their outstanding mechanical, electrical, and optical properties. "They also are an ideal nanomaterial for infrared applications," says Sheng Wang, an associate professor in the Department of Electronics at Peking University in Beijing, China, and an author of the Optical Materials Express paper.

"For starters, these nanotubes exhibit strong and broadband infrared light absorption, which can be tuned by selecting nanotubes of different diameters. Also, due to their high electron mobility, nanotubes react very rapidly - on the order of picoseconds - to infrared light." In comparison to traditional infrared detectors, which are based on semiconductors made of a mercury-cadmium-telluride alloy, the SWNTs are an order of magnitude more efficient, the researchers report.

The team's photovoltaic infrared detector is formed by aligning SWNT arrays on a silicon substrate. The nanotubes arrays are then placed between asymmetric palladium and scandium contacts. These two metals have properties that collectively create what is known as an Ohmic contact, a region in a semiconductor device that has very low electrical resistance, which helps make the detector operate more efficiently.

"Fabrication of carbon nanotube infrared detectors can be readily implemented on a flexible substrate and large wafer at a low cost," explains Wang.

The detector demonstrated "acceptable sensitivity" at room temperature and may be significantly improved by increasing the density of the carbon nanotubes, according to the team. The signal-to-noise performance of conventional infrared photodetectors is limited by their natural infrared emission, which is subsequently absorbed by the detector. To avoid having this stray radiation overwhelm the detector, liquid nitrogen or electric cooling is generally used to suppress this thermal effect.

However, this makes infrared detectors more complex and expensive to operate. The new design eliminates this need because carbon nanotubes have special thermal properties. At room temperature, they emit comparatively little infrared radiation of their own, especially when the carbon nanotube is on the substrate. In addition, nanotubes are very good at conducting heat, so temperatures do not build up on the detector itself.

One of the biggest surprises for the team was achieving relatively high infrared detectivity (the radiation power required to produce a signal from a photoconductor) using a carbon nanotube thin film only a few nanometers thick, Wang points out. Notably, conventional infrared detectors require much thicker films, on the scale of hundreds of nanometers, to obtain comparable detectivity.

Another huge advantage of the detector is that the fabrication process is completely compatible with carbon nanotube transistors - meaning no big expensive equipment changes are necessary. "Our doping-free chemical approach provides an ideal platform for carbon nanotube electronic and optoelectronic integrated circuits," says Wang.

The next step for the team is to focus on improving the detectivity of the detector with greater SWNT density, and to also achieve a wide spectrum response with improved diameter control.

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Small RNAs (smRNAs) in plants, mainly microRNAs and small interfering RNAs, play important roles in both transcriptional and post-transcriptional gene regulation. The broad application of high-throughput sequencing technology has made routinely generation of bulk smRNA sequences in laboratories possible, thus has significantly increased the need for batch analysis tools.

Scientists from Dr. WANG Xiujie’s group of Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, the Chinese Academy of Sciences have developed an online smRNA analysis tool, named psRobot, which can identify smRNA with stem-loop shaped precursors (such as miRNA and short hairpin RNAs) and their target genes/transcripts requiring only smRNA sequences as input.

psRobot has two modules: the first module is designed to identify stem-loop shaped smRNAs, including their expression in major plant smRNA biogenesis gene mutants and smRNA associated protein complexes to give clues to the smRNA generation and functional processes, their genome locations and precursor sequences.

The second module is designed to return target prediction results of smRNAs, including smRNA target list, target multiplicity, target site conservation and biological data support, such as degradome data.

Through these tools, users can easily acquire structure, biogenesis information and target genes of interesting smRNAs, which will largely facilitate the functional analysis of smRNAs in plants. PsRobot is freely accessible at

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The above work has been published online in Nucleic Acids Research (DOI:10.1093/nar/gks554) with Dr. WU Huajun and MA Yingke as the co-first authors. This study is supported by grants from National Natural Science Foundation of China, Chinese Academy of Sciences and Ministry of Agriculture of China.

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On May 21, Jiangsu Sunrain Solar Energy Co., Ltd. was successfully listed on the A-share market.

From the stumbling into existence of the first solar energy water heater to a solar thermal energy industry with an annual output value of about RMB 100 billion Yuan, and from the chaotic competition of thousands of companies to the first solar thermal energy IPO of Sunrain Solar Energy, China's solar thermal energy industry has evolved from a "grass root economy" into an "emerging industry", and has entered the capital market.

Overall, from household water heater to thermal utilization engineering project, and from concentrated heat collection to industrial applications such as heat supply, cooling, drying, and power generation, the solar thermal energy industry has achieved leap-forward development. This is attributed to the motivation of leading enterprises, as well as the innovation of business model and industrial modality.

Experts point out that compared with the solar photovoltaic industry's heavy dependence on foreign countries, the development of solar thermal energy industry has relied on rigid domestic demands. China has the world's largest thermal utilization areas.

Moreover, more than 95 percent of the core technologies are self-owned, with international leading technologies in such aspects as solar heat collection, high-temperature electricity generation integration system, thermal cooling, sea water desalinization, construction energy conservation, and equipment testing.

MICOE, a subsidiary of Sunrain, is a planner and initiator of China's solar thermal energy industry expansion. 10 years ago, solar thermal energy was still a grass root industry. Low entry threshold, uneven quality, and disordered competition dragged the industry into a chaos. It was in such an environment that MICOE grew and, with its industrial chain integration strategy, established itself as the leader of the industry within only a few years.

Since 2008 when the solar thermal energy industry entered a golden stage of development, MICOE's TV commercials have been dominating CCTV's golden hours. Moreover, it has also established partnership with China's aerospace enterprise. In the next half of 2008, a new generation of solar energy products, the "Feitian" series, which are equipped with aerospace technologies, were introduced. At that time, the phrase "aerospace pipe and thermal isolation cabin" became almost synonymous with solar water heater. According to a dealer in Henan: "at that time, in an ordinary town, about 100 units of solar energy water heaters of the MICOE brand were sold every day".

Besides the extensive integration of marketing and technology, MICOE's integration idea has also yielded high efficiency and high returns in the complete industrial chain. In 2009, MICOE's Luoyang complete industrial chain production base was completed, combining R&D, manufacturing, sales, and service of high borosilicate glass pipe, aerospace vacuum heat concentration pipe, and whole unit of solar thermal energy unitization system.

The company has also basically completed several bases in Beijing, Jiangsu, Shandong, and Henan, laying a solid foundation for the rapid development of its parent company Sunrain.

For the solar thermal energy industry, the countryside has always been the largest market for the single unit of solar energy water heater in China. However, since 2011, growth of the solar energy market in the countryside has slowed down, and the urban solar energy engineering market has started to develop at a faster pace.

A series of policies, including the mandatory installation of solar water heater in buildings lower than 12 stories promulgated in numerous cities in many provinces in China, the launching of the pilot projects of "national key cities of reconstruction of large public buildings for the purpose of energy conservation", and the "energy conservation guidelines for public institutions" published recently in Beijing, has painted a development roadman for the urbanization of solar thermal energy products.

According to people from Beijing Municipal Commission of Development and Reform, energy consumption statistics in this year will cover all kinds of public institutions in Beijing, achieving online measuring and real-time monitoring of the consumption of energies and resources such as electricity, heat, gas, and water. This also points out a direction for the urban application of solar thermal energy: transforming from solar thermal energy manufacturers to solutions providers and energy service providers.

Market analysts point out that in comparison with the solar photovoltaic industry, the solar thermal industry has higher practicability, higher penetration rate, and higher proprietary technology content. The market volume of the industry is currently over RMB 100 billion Yuan.

As energy saving and emission reduction policies unfold during the 12th Five-year Plan, the solar energy market may reach a volume of RMB 1 trillion Yuan, with urban energy saving and emission reduction being the new growth point for the industry in the next 10 years. If leading enterprises are able to achieve expansion and growth synchronically in these three aspects "thermal water, thermal energy, and thermal electricity", the market volume and investment value will expand exponentially.

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Researchers in China based at State Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Materials and Technologies, Sun Yat-Sen University, have demonstrated a selective area growth (SAG) method for recessing gates in aluminium gallium nitride (AlGaN) semiconductor heterostructure field-effect transistors (HFETs). The resulting device had higher performance than one produced using conventional recessing techniques by avoiding the damage associated with plasma etch.

Recessing refers to the creation of a trench in the barrier layer of the HFET, reducing the distance between the gate electrode and channel. This can shift the threshold voltage of the transistor in a positive direction, even enabling normally-off behavior (off at zero gate potential) as opposed to the usual normally-on operation of simple nitride HFETs.

Normally-off operation is desirable for reducing power consumption and for fail-safe operation in power devices.

The HFET structures were grown on silicon (111) substrates using metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD). The buffer consisted of 1.4μm of high-resistance intrinsic GaN. The barrier layer was Al0.25Ga0.75N. The SAG process for recessing consisted of patterning a silicon dioxide mask layer on top of a 10nm AlGaN barrier.

A further 15nm growth was then carried out to leave a recessed stripe for the gate electode.

Comparison devices with (ICP-HFET) and without (C-HFET) recessing from inductively coupled plasma (ICP) etch into the 25nm AlGaN barrier layer were also produced...

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Professor XI Ning from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Michigan State University and Professor LIU Lianqing at the Shenyang Institute of Automation Chinese Academy of Sciences’ State Key Laboratory of Robotics have developed a novel cutting technique capable of cutting graphene with accurate control.

The novel mechanism has been developed on the basis of nanoscale force feedback and involves an atomic force microscope-based nanorobot. The research titled ‘Graphene Control Cutting Using an Atomic Force Microscope Based NanoRobot’ has been reported in SCIENTIA SINICA Physica, Mechanica & Astronomica.

The integration of robotics enables efficient nanomanipulation hence resolves the drawbacks of atomic force microscopy, which are low efficiency, requirement for real-time feedback, and inferior location ability. The researchers systematically investigated the correlation between nanocutting forces and lattice cutting directions by rotating the sample in the identical cutting conditions, including tip, efficient cutting surface of the tip, cutting velocity and load.

The researchers discovered that the cutting forces were associated with the graphene lattice’s cutting direction due to the asymmetry of the nanomaterial’s crystal structure, meaning that nanoscale forces can be utilized as a real-time feedback to provide a closed-loop mechanism that is capable of cutting graphene with accurate control. The cutting forces change with the cutting direction with a variation as high as 209.36 nN, in the same period.

This finding is the basis to develop a closed-loop fabrication strategy by utilizing real-time force as a sensor feedback to manipulate the cutting direction with lattice accuracy. This novel technique in combination with current parallel multi-tip technology can be used to produce large-scale, high-efficiency nanodevices based on graphene at a low cost.

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X-linked mental retardation (XLMR) is an inherited intellectual disability with abnormalities in neural development. Fibroblast growth factor 13 (FGF13) is a candidate gene for the XLMR mapped to the X chromosome. However its function in development remains largely unknown.

Scientists recently discovered that FGF13 acts intracellularly as a microtubule-stabilizing protein required for axon/leading process development and neuronal migration in the cerebral cortex, and FGF13-deficient mice display severe impairment of learning and memory.

Dr. ZHANG Xu’s research group at the Institute of Neuroscience (ION), Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, CAS, found that the splicing isoform FGF13B was enriched in axonal growth cones and interacts directly with microtubules. FGF13B was found to polymerize tubulins and stabilize microtubules.

The loss of FGF13B impaired the transition of cortical neurons from the multipolar to bipolar morphology and increased the branching of axons and leading processes, leading to a delayed radial migration in the cerebral cortex. Genetic deletion of FGF13 in mice resulted in lamination defects in both the neocortex and hippocampus, and these mice displayed weakened learning and memory, which is correlated to XLMR patients’ intellectual disability.

This work entitled “Fibroblast growth factor 13 is a microtubule-stabilizing protein regulating neuronal polarization and migration” was published in Cell on June 22, 2012. The study was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China, National Basic Research Program of China and Chinese Academy of Sciences.

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Middleware is the bridge that connects complicated hardware systems, server systems, application systems, and communication systems. In other words, middleware is needed in order to achieve data exchange and computing between different application systems, such as transportation industry system and banking industry system. Middleware is basic software that is as important as a computer's operating system.

During the 11th Five-year Plan, the Chinese government spent a great deal of human resources, materials, and money in its strategic development. Presently, these projects are coming to completion one after another, and their industrialization is about to begin.

Wuhan, a three-town city where two rivers converge, has the most complicated traffic conditions in China. Wuhan has long been searching for a smart traffic solution with which drivers can pay toll without stopping their cars. Now, they have found it: there is not a single toll gate in sight wherever you drive in Wuhan, but each time you pass a bridge or a tunnel, a text message will be sent to your phone informing you of the toll that has been collected.

This urban Electronic Toll Collection system in Wuhan is one of the most advanced toll collection technologies in the world, putting Wuhan alongside Singapore and London as the world's three major smart traffic cities.

The system is based on the key specialized project of "core electronic component, high-end communication chip, and infrastructure software products" of the 11th Five-Year Plan and achievements in such subjects as "Reference Implementation of Nationalized Middleware & Platforms" and "Products R&D and Industrialization of Integrated Middleware Suite", achieving breakthroughs in core technologies of China's self-owned and high-end middleware and enabling the construction of infrastructure platforms of smart cities in China to be independent from foreign technologies.

Put middleware on the end market

In 2009, CVIC Software Engineering took the lead to work with famous universities and colleges and scientific institutes in China to undertake the two above-mentioned middleware subjects, which were delivered and accepted successfully recently. "The development process involves numerous achievements and wisdoms and more than 20,000 people, with more than 10 million words of materials submitted", said Jing Xinhai, chairman of the board and CEO of CVIC SE.

The innovation method that centers on companies clears the way for the rapid industrialization of technologies. CVIC SE combines the core technology achievements of the specialized project with the company's more than 20 years' experience to launch the "Loong Smart Platform".

"The 'Loong Smart Platform' is not a lab product, but a product with powerful productivity that has been tested in actual practice", said Jing Xinhai, who strongly believes in the technological superiority of the platform. Guided by this idea, CVIC SE has carried out a series of application development based on the "Loong Smart Platform". After Wuhan's electronic toll collection system, CVIC SE has implemented intelligentization upgrade on its original service platforms in such fields as financing, education, and tax.

"When we were bidding for Wuhan's ETC project, an engineer of a well-known international software company called me and told me, 'are you out of your mind, undertaking such a completed system'", Lu Haitao, from the Traffic Business Department of CVIC SE, said with pride. The Wuhan ETC may appear to be merely the achievement of toll collection without stopping the cars, but the data exchange and systems involved are really complicated.

"Every day, the system senses, analyses, and sorts out a myriad of 160G of data of at least 400,000 automobiles. It operates steadily 7*24, and connects seamlessly with more than 1,000 service points. It links and communicates with numerous systems, including banking, annual ticket, China Mobile, CNC, China Telecom, freeway, traffic administration, public security, and finance", said Lu Haitao.

According to the calculation of relevant government departments of Wuhan: compared with stop-car toll collection, the establishment of the ETC system has increased traffic smoothness by 23 percent, reduced gas emission by 60 percent, and reduced traffic accidents by 15 percent. Besides, the system has helped the police to gain clues to a number of cases.

Middleware underpinning smart cities

Our urban informatization is facing a crisis as we upgrade from digital cities to smart cities.

On one hand, the updating and upgrading of new technologies including cloud computing, the internet of things, and mobile internet are becoming more and more complicated; on the other hand, the application systems used in the construction of digital cities are rather independent from one another, with inconsistent technologies and interfaces, making each system an isolated information island. And the most important issue is safety. All problems and difficulties boil down to whether breakthroughs can be achieved by China's self-owned middleware.

Undoubtedly, Wuhan's practice gives hope to the solution to the crisis. Experts who took part in accepting the delivery suggest that smart traffic is the foundation for the construction of smart cities, and it is also the most complicated application.

The complicatedness of establishment and the extent of information processing of Wuhan's ETC project are more difficult than that of Singapore and London. Besides, "I can tell you proudly that we are the sole integrator of this project and we developed the entire software system all by ourselves", Jing Xinhai told the reporter.

The "Loong Smart Platform" can provide all-dimension supporting services to smart cities, such as adaptation of all sorts of completed lower-level technologies and rapid construction of all sorts of smart applications on the upper level. It can be extended to adapt to future technology development and be upgraded online.

It is equipped with the capability to visually and uniformly supervise the configuration and operation status of all application modules in the platform and those that are supported by the platform, and therefore guarantee the safety, transparency, and continuous development of smart cities.

Presently, smart financial program, sensing campus program, and smart taxation program that are constructed basing on CVIC SE's "Loong Smart Platform" have been put into practice and are yielding excellent results. Moreover, the "Loong Smart Platform" can be applied on the integration of smart systems with more difficulty and broader extent, which clears the path for the upgrading of smart cities in China.

Jing Xinhai believes that: "Middleware is the fastest-developing product among China's domestic basic software products. At present, the function and supporting capability of China's middleware can totally match that of similar foreign products".

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