China in Africa

The team around YU Xuefeng at the CAS Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology (SIAT) has developed a low-cost metal-free photocatalyst based on black phosphorus for effective photocatalysis. Using a simple ball-milling technique, the team converted red phosphorus and urea to black phosphorus and black phosphorus/CN complexes in large-scale, among which the material cost of black phosphorus in the photocatalyst was estimated to be just 0.016 RMB pear gram. By forming P-N bonds, black phosphorus and CN interacted to form a stable binary which showed broad absorption as well as effective charge separation, and possessed abundant active sites, giving rise to excellent photocatalytic performance. Without using a co-catalyst, the metal-free catalyst emitted H₂ consistently at a rate as high as 786 μmol·h^-1·g^-1 and RhB was decomposed in merely 25 mins during visible light irradiation.

CAS news release, November 26, 2018

According to the National Bureau of Forestry and Grassland, China will have created an ecological environment as a whole by 2020 and realized the targets of “beautiful China” by 2035. The forest industry should have reached the state of developed countries by 2050. By 2020, the forest ratio will be 23 %, forest reserves 16.5 billion cubic meters, the village greening ratio 30%, grassland rate 56%, and new anti-desertification area 10 million hectares.

Japan JST China news, November 26, 2018

The team developed a graphene-based aluminum fuel cell with an energy density of 545Wh/kg and a capacity of 130kWh. The system consists of an array of six 10-cell batteries in series. Test results show that 50A current discharge power can reach 3000W, peak power is expected to be as high as 4800W. The battery system is expected to be applied to a power source or a backup power source such as an electric car. In order to demonstrate its use, the lighting of a building including power supply of the graphene-based far infrared energy heating was shown.

CAS news release, November 26, 2018

The Tibet – Changchun grid connection is considered the most complicated in the world, due to severe differences in elevation. Transmission capacity is 400,000 kW, with a target on 1 million kW. Total investiment is about 16.2 billion RMB or about 2 billion €.

Japan JST China news, November 26, 2018

The group of ZHANG Dawei divided the vitamin B12 biosynthesic pathway into six modules into which they engineered a total of 28 genes from R. capsulatus, Brucella melitensis, Sinorhizobium meliloti 320, ^,S. typhimurium, and Rhodopseudomonas palustris. Each module was expressed in E. coli on individual plasmids or incorporated into the E. coli genome. After metabolic engineering to ameliorate cobalt chelation and remove module 4 bottlenecks, as well as optimization of fermentation conditions, vitamin B12 production was increased 250fold to 307 µg per g dry cell.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-07412-6

CAS news release, November 26, 2018

The FRVT 2018 organized by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has measure advancements in the accuracy and speed of one-to-many face recognition identification algorithms searching enrolled galleries containing at least 10 million identities. According to Xinhua, Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms developed by Chinese researchers have won the top five places in a global competition in facial recognition technology. Two algorithms developed by YITU Technology have taken the top two places. Two algorithms developed by Sensetime came third and fourth with another developed by the CAS Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology placed fifth. The test measures the performance of facial recognition technologies by using a database from ongoing criminal investigations and other real-life scenarios.

CAS news release, November 22, 2018

Yanming Rare Earth New Power Technology Co., Ltd. located in the Baotou Rare Earth High-tech Zone in Inner Mongolia might soon start mass production of a new type of Nickel batteries composed of lanthanum and cerium as the main components of the electrode materials. The new batteries are said to have high safety, long life, and high recyclability. They take only 8 minutes to fully charge, and they can withstand -55 °C low temperature. They will be used in electric buses and have been successfully tested in Baotou City’s public transportation system for one year. IP is said to be fully Chinese.

Science and Technology Daily, November 20, 2018

According to the 2018 World Eco-Environment Remote Monitoring Report released by the Ministry of Science and Technology, CO₂ emission intensity per unit GDP of China decreased by 46% between 2005 and 2017. Since 2013, there was nearly no growth in CO₂ emissions in spite of a significant increase of GDP.

Japan JST China news, November 19, 2018

The group of SU Xiaoquan at CAS QIBEBT has established a “microbiome search engine” which is based on two indices: a microbiome novelty score MNS evaluates the compositional uniqueness of a microbiome sample at the time of its birth, whereas a microbiome attention score MAS quantifies the scientific attention devoted to the microbiome by counting the number of close neighbors of the microbiome. A microbiome focus index MFI, which is derived from MNS and MAS, then measures the impact and contribution of a microbiome sample to explorations for novel microbiomes.  The team hopes to thus identify “sleeping beauty” microbiomes that are still very novel in structure at present quantifies the number of close neighbors in the microbiome.

CAS news release, November 14, 2018

According to the Top500 list, China contributes 227 systems of the world’s supercomputers compared with 109 of the United States. However, systems in the United States are, on average, more powerful and lead the top 10 with “Summit” and “Sierra,” which have similar architectures with IBM cores and NVIDIA GPUs. China’s Sunway TaihuLight supercomputer is ranked third with a performance of 93.0 petaflops, and Tianhe-2A of the National Supercomputer Center in Guangzhou is now number four. Germany’s SuperMUC-NG ranks number eight. It was built by China’s Lenovo, which produced 140 supercomputers out of the To500. The most energy-efficient system once again is RIKEN’s Shoubu system in Japan.

CAS news release, November 13, 2018

The Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) in Hefei, East China’s Anhui province claims to have reached for the first time a plasma central electron temperature of 100 million C, the ignition temperature of nuclear fusion. China designed and constructed the EAST in 2006. The facility is 11 meters tall, with a diameter of 8 meters, and a weight of 400 tons.

CAS news release, November 11, 2018

Autophagy is a mechanism to selectively degrade damaged proteins from cells and organelles in the lysosome. A research group at CAS Institute of Zoology has investigated peripheral blood leukocyte transcriptome data of 171 longevity families in Hainan (centenarians, their F1 offspring and spouses of F1 offspring) and found the up-regulation of autophagy – lysosomal signal pathway genes the most significant signal. Four related genes (CTSB ATP6V0C WIPI1 and ATG4D) are also upregulated in human embryonic lung fibroblasts possibly enhancing autophagy and reducing senescence. An overexpression of Atg18a, a related gene in Drosophila melanogaster led to a significant extension of the lifespan of Drosophila.

CAS news release, November 11, 2ß18

The Beidou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) will have gone global by around 2020. The first forum on Beidou cooperation between China and Arab countries was held in 2017 in Shanghai. In April 2018, the China-Arab States BDS/GNSS Center was officially inaugurated in Tunisia, and in the first half of 2019 Tunisia will host the 2nd forum on “belt-and-road” China-Arab cooperation.

CAS news release, November 9, 2018

The groups of YANG Jun and ZHU Yongguan at the CAS Institute of Urban Environment have analyzed patterns of antibiotic resistance genes (ARG) in 42 natural lakes and reservoirs across China. Using high-throughput DNA sequencing, they detected 167 ARGs and 9 mobile genetic elements mostly coding for efflux transporters. Human activities strongly correlated with the normalized abundance of ARGs, and their composition in south/central China was different from that in the north.

 CAS news release, November 5, 2018

The cars offers 360 ° omnidirectional sensing functions by combining various sensors such as laser radar, professional video cameras, millimeter wave radars etc. Safety is ensured by a person who operates the car in case of emergency. The taxi can be called by a dedicated app or a mini program on WeChat and requires an initial fare of 12 yuan (about 1,80 €).

Japan JST China news, November 5, 2018