The service was started two years after launching its Tiantong-1 01 mobile communications satellite into orbit. The goverment decided to develop their own satphone service after a major earthquake hit Sichuan province in 2008. The quake put an end to all ground communication systems, and the whole disaster relief depended on foreign satellite systems. Satellite Tiantong-1 01 was delivered in 2010 and launched in 2016. It features broad coverage and strong communication capabilities. New all-mode satellite mobile phones can now be used as ordinary phones in cities, but can also be turned to satellite mode in places with poor connection.

CAS news release, May 21, 2018

The automatic stem cell induction and cultivation equipment covers an area of ​​25 square meters and consists of six modules: automated incubator, automated liquid processing system, microscopic online observation system, high-accuracy clone picker, culture dish delivery system, and equipment control system. The reprogramming of stem cells begins with an incubator for 24 individually induced pluripotent stem cells in parallel. Then, the 6-well culture plate is transferred from the incubator to the operation chamber by a robot arm in a class b environment. Subsequently, the culture plate is placed in a microscopic imaging system with a 1.2 micron resolution. The entire process does not exceed 10 minutes. The automated process is said to correspond to a GMP-level cell preparation equivalent to 24 persons of skilled staff. The clinical application of cell therapy in hospitals requires stem cell preparation, and automatic stem cell induction and culture equipment has been gradually promoted in research centers of various research institutes or first class hospitals.

China Bio news release, May 18, 2018

Transparent conductive films (TCFs) are an important component of touch screens, smart windows, liquid crystal displays, organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), and organic photovoltaic cells. CHENG Huiming and LIU Chang at CAS Institute of Metal Research have synthesized transparent conductive films of good optoelectronic performance by a chemical vapor deposition method. The pristine SWCNT films showed a low sheet resistance of 41Ω cm-1 at 90% transmittance for 550-nm light. After HNO3 treatment, the sheet resistance further decreases to 25Ω cm-1, better than that of conventional indium tin oxide (ITO) on a flexible substrate. Using this SWCNT film as anodes, the OLEDs constructed demonstrated a high current efficiency of 75 cd A-1, 7.5 times higher than that of the best reported CNT anode–based OLEDs. The OLEDs also exhibited excellent flexibility and stability.

CAS news release, May 15, 2018

China’s new mother vessel for the manned deep-sea research submersible Jiaolong will be named Shenhai Yihao (Deep Sea No. 1). Jiaolong, which is undergoing a major maintenance check at the base, will start a global deep-sea scientific exploration mission in 2020. The new vessel, to be delivered around March 2019, will have a displacement of approximately 4,000 tons and be able to travel 12,000 nautical miles per journey. Named after a mythical dragon, Jiaolong reached its deepest depth of 7,062 meters in the Mariana Trench in June of 2012. Jiaolong has dived 158 times in the past five years.

CAS news release, May 14, 2018

A team around SONG Wenjuan  from Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography, LIN Hui from Zhejiang Academy of Agricultural Sciences and other researchers investigated the occurrence and distribution antibiotics and antibiotic resistance genes in Chinese and global lakes. The meta-analysis showed that seven antibiotics (sulfamethoxazole, sulfamerazine, sulfameter, tetracycline, oxytetracycline, erythromycin, and roxithromycin) were found at high concentrations in both lake water and lake sediments. No significant difference in sulfonamides concentration, but a significant difference in quinolones was found in lake water from China and that from other countries worldwide.  There was no significant difference in the concentration of sulfonamide resistance genes (sul1 and sul2) in lake water and river water.

CAS news release, May 4, 2018

Following an initiative oft he Ministry of Agriculture, China attempts to improve rural milk qualit standards. By now, 15 milk enterprises in China have passed the high-quality milk standard tests which are claimed to be more stringent than current standards of the dairy industry in Europe and America. Since the Sanlu infant milk powder incident in 2008, the problems exposed by the domestic dairy industry have caused consumers to have a great deal of mistrust, and imported dairy products have flooded into the domestic market. According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Statistics, China’s total milk imports reached 1,955,600 tons in 2016, a year-on-year increase of 21.4%. In 2016, China imported 370,600 tons of milk powder from New Zealand, accounting for 83.3% of China’s total milk powder imports. Improved quality standards and their monitoring is hoped to ensure the supply of nutritious, safe, and reliable quality milk products to consumers but there seems still a long way to go.

China Bio news release, May 3, 2018

The group around SUN Jibin used a ribosomal 5S rRNA gene as a promoter to mediate the expression of sgRNA in a novel and efficient CRISPR/Cas9 system which enabled Cas9 to cut 100% of the Aspergillus niger genome. This allowed to establish an efficient Aspergillus niger genome editing toolkit. With a 40 bp short homology donor DNA, single- and multi-site knock-ins and large 48-kb DNA knockout genomes obtained with accurate editing. The new CRISPR/Cas9 approach effectively solved the problem that Aspergillus niger espresses sgRNA activity.

CAS news release, May 3, 2018

The group around ZHAO Guang has engineered E. coli to produce a range of value-added chemicals starting from D-xylose, a sugar which makes up about 25 % of biomass. The researchers introduced the xylose metabolism pathway of Caulobacter crescentus into E. coli, thereby establishing a new biosynthetic pathway to glycolic acid and ethylene glycol. The yield of glycolic acid was 43.6 g/L, the xylose conversion rate 46.4%, and production efficiency reached 0.91 g/L/h. The yield of ethylene glycol was 72g/L, the conversion rate of xylose 40%, and the production rate 1.38g/L/h. In a previous study, the group achieved efficient biotransformation of xylose to xylonate and 1,2,4-butanetriol.

CAS news release, April 25, 2018

China has over 3.5 million new cases of cancer every year, and the anti-tumor drug market has exceeded 100 billion yuan, about half of which is imported. In order to meet urgent needs, in recent years, China has introduced a number of policies to encourage and accelerate the listing of anti-cancer and other innovative drugs. As an example, there is a shortage of drugs and methods for the treatment of multiple myeloma. The domestic marketed drugs are far from meeting the needs of patients. The application for registration of anticancer drugs with obvious clinical advantages has now been included into the scope of priority review and approval, in order to accelerate the import of innovative drugs by changing the application of clinical trials from an approval system to a default one.

China Bio news release, April 28, 2018

LI Ning and colleagues have developed a biomimetic route to synthesize pyromellitic acid from lignocellulose. Based on this reagent, a three-component cycloaddition reaction catalyzed by proline using formaldehyde, crotonaldehyde or acrylate/fumarate as raw materials led to 1,4-cyclohexanedimethanol (CHDM), 1,4-cyclohexanedicarboxylic acid (CHDA) or 1,2-cyclohexanedicarboxylate in yields of more than 70%.

CAS news release, April 28, 2018

The excellent bipolar conjugated polymer material can both conduct electrons and holes and thus is an interesting base material for organic FETs. WAN Xiaobo and colleagues at QIBEBT used a large hindered base to successfully synthesize the thiazole isoindigo precursor, thiazole bismuth, and transformed it to thiazole Isoindigo. They further optimized the synthesis and polymerization routes, successfully synthesized polymer P (TzII-TTT) of isothiazole blue and thiophene, and studied the material’s photophysical properties and field effect transistor performance. The hole mobility of a P(TzII-TTT) bipolar field-effect transistor was 3.93 cm2V-1S-1, and the electron mobility 1.07 cm2V-1S-1, exceeding the performance of the similarly-structured pyridine isoindigo blue polymer.

CAS news release, April 28 2018

During a visit at Optical Valley in Wuhan, president Xi stressed that core technologies that are important to the country should always be fully mastered by the country itself. When visiting FiberHome Telecommunication Technologies Co, a pioneer in the optical communications sector, Xi said the industry is of great importance, as the country strives for a major global role in cyberspace. China has proved strong in being able to accomplish major tasks through concerted and concentrated efforts, and by doing so the country can achieve more breakthroughs in science and technology, Xi said.

CAS news release, April 28, 2018

The group of ZHANG Xiumin has found that urea+nitrate pretreatment of straw could destroy its physical structure and increase the neutral-detergent soluble content that degrades easily and fast in the rumen. Using wheat and rice straw, such pretreatment increased in vitro degradation by ruminant cultures. Also, CH4 production was decreased because the population of methanogens was reduced.

CAS news release, April 26, 2018

The group of JIN Gongsheng identified four potential Na+/H+ antiporters (Mrp1-2, NhaP and ChaA), and systematically described the physiological adaptation strategies of Corynebacterium glutamicum under saline and alkali stress conditions. They found that the Mrp1 protein of C. glutamicum has the most significant Na+/H+ ion transport activity, and this protein mainly plays a role under alkaline conditions. In vivo experiments further confirmed that the Mrp1 antiporter is mainly involved in the tolerance response of the strain under high NaCl and alkaline stress conditions, and the Mrp2 antiporter is mainly involved in the tolerance response of the strain under high KCl stress conditions. Loss at the same time will seriously affect the normal survival ability of the strain under high saline conditions.

CAS news release, April 26, 2018

The program, launched on April 23, 2018, by an US consortium, https://www.earthbiogenome.org/organization/, plans to decipher the genomes of all known eukaryotic species in the next 10 years, and use genomics techniques to help discover the remaining 80% to 90% of species unknown in the scientific community. It will include major contributions from BGI in Shenzhen. The total project funding is expected to be US$4.7 billion, which is lower than the current cost of the Human Genome Project. A major challenges is sample collection. The EBP project needs to develop a global strategy for collecting sample vouchers sufficiently preserved to produce high quality genomic sequences. The geographical distribution of biodiversity and the presence of biodiversity hotspots in remote areas of the world, such as the Amazon Basin or Borneo, will also make the collection of many organisms a significant challenge.

China Bio news release, April 25, 2018

According to PEI Zhaoyu, deputy director of the Lunar Exploration and Space Program Center of the China National Space Administration (CNSA), the Chang’e-5 lunar probe will contain four parts: an orbiter, a returner, an ascender and a lander. The lander will put moon samples into a vessel in the ascender after the moon landing. Then the ascender will take off from the Moon to dock with the orbiter and the returner which orbit the moon, and transfer the samples to the returner. The orbiter and returner then head back to the earth, separating from each other several thousands off the earth. Finally, the returner will make its way back to the earth.

CAS news release, April 25, 2018

CAS TIB was elected the 22nd International Centre of Excellence in Science and Technology at COMSATS, and will host COMSATS Coordination Committee meeting in 2019. CAS TIB is actively preparing for the establishment of a National Synthetic Biotechnology Innovation Center. COMSATS is an intergovernmental organization with its permanent Secretariat based in Islamabad, Pakistan. Established in 1994, the organization comprising 26 Member States, strives to promote South-South cooperation in the fields of Science and Technology that are most relevant to socio-economic development.

CAS news release, April 24, 2018

CT102 is an antisense nucleic acid drug targeting the IGF1R gene involved in liver cancer. The drug was jointly developed by WANG Shengqi, a researcher at the Academy of Military Sciences, and Hangzhou Tianlong Pharmaceutical Co. China is a country with a high incidence of liver cancer. The number of people who die from this disease each year is as much as 380,000, accounting for more than half of the world’s total.

China Bio news release, April 19, 2018

Sino Valley Technology Co. has reported the birth oft he first in vitro fertilized dogs in China, 2 male dogs and 4 female puppets. The company has successively established canine somatic cell lines, acquired mature oocytes, done somatic cell nuclear transfer and embryo transfer. A canine somatic cell cloning technology platform and a dog gene editing technology platform with independent intellectual property rights was established.

China Bio news release, April 17, 2018

Yuliang LI and colleagues from the CAS Institute of Chemistry have found a new catalyst for hydrogen production from water. They used graphdiyne and molybdenum disulfide as a catalyst and found it in alkaline media even superior to Pt/C. The high intrinsic activity was attributed to the enhanced electron transfer kinetics at the interface between eGDY and MDS, which facilitated the dissociation of the O–H bonds in water.

CAS news release, April 17, 2018