A joint team of Heilongjiang University, FU Honggang, and the Jinan Shengquan Group have found a procedure to prepare graphene from corn cob cellulose. The production line allows for an output of 100 t/y and will be further scaled-up. China produces 100 million tons of corn cobs per year, mostly in Shandong, Hebei aund Liaoning province.

China Bio news release, May 23, 2017

On May 18, Shanghai Changzheng Hospital inaugurated the “Long March Cell Clinical Research Center”, a joint military and civilian unit. The center comprises a fertility preservation center” which stores ovarian tissue and eggs and provides 3 years of free preservation of perinatal cell for each baby born here. Immune cells of cancer patients are stored for treatment of refractory tumors. And pancreatic cells are stored for later islet cell transplantation in case diabetes develops – a procedure already tested successfully on 7 patients.”

China Bio news release, May 23, 2017

The group of JIANG Min at Nanjing Tech University has isolated Clostridium strain NJP7 which, in an optimized medium containing vitamin B3, forms 2.06 g/L n-butanol and 054 g/L of isopropyl alcohol during simultaneous saccharification of hemicellulose and fermentation.

China Bio news release, May 22, 2017

The startup company, located in Wuhan Optical Valley in Hubei Province, claims to have achieved yields of 10 g/kg of rice at a purity of 99,9999 %. A clinical trial is planned from August 2017 at Beijing Tongren Hospital. Presently, the output of rHSA by the company is limited to 1 t/y, but construction of a plant at Xiantao is planned which would provide 40 t of rHSA by 2020. China’s annual demand of HSA is estimated at 420 t, bot domestic production from blood plasma is only about 100 t.

China Bio news release, May 18, 2017

The grou of Lingbao YANG at the institute of Intelligent Machines (IIM) has developed a portable kit for detection of drugs such as heroin, methamphetamine etc. in human urine. The kit consists of 4 parts: a pretreatment module, an enhanced chip module, an intelligent identification module and a spectrometer module which is based on surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS). The system will now be tested in Anhui Province and eventually in public security units around the whole country.

CAS news release, May 16, 2017

As approved by the National Development and Reform Commission in January 2017, the laboratory will be organized by CAS’ University of Science and Technology in Hebei but will also have units at Fudan University, Shenyang Institute of Automation, CAS Institute of Microelectronics and Baidu Co. The focus will be on artificial intelligence, on brain-like brain chips, brain-like intelligent robots and other emerging technologies.

China Bio news release, May 16, 2017

Thematically, the focus for the next 5 years will be on so-called “subversive technologies” such as genome editing and interdisciplinary fields such as artificial intelligence. Key programs will be on biomedicine, bioresources utilization and highly integrated biosecurity threat defense system. China wants to become a leader in biotechnology by strengthening biotech innovation alliances, e. g., in the Beijing Tianjin Hebei area, in the Yantze River and in the Pearl River Deltas. Strategic resources such as gene centers or strain/tissue collection centers will be built, preferentially in specialized parks within national high-tech parks, and a biotech technology transfer service system aims at a biotech contract turnover of over 100 billion Yuan.

China Bio news release, May 15, 2017

The group around Xin BAO has designed and prepared Au-CeOx catalysts based on Au nanoparticles. Density functional theory calculations showed that the Au-CeOx interface contributes to the stabilization of the key intermediate species, *COOH, during the subsequent hydrogenation process, thereby promoting the formation and desorption of carbon monoxide. At -0.89 V (vs. RHE), the Faraday efficiency of carbon monoxide formation of such Au-CeOx catalyst was 89.1%.

CAS news release, May 12, 2017

The Chinese Academy of Sciences, the State Language Commission and China’s National Committee for Terms in Sciences and Technologies jointly have announced that elements 113, 115, 117 and 118 were given official Chinese names. The Chinese name of the element 115 – Moscovium – is an existing Chinese character 镆” ( pronounced as mo), but three new Chinese characters were created for the rest. Based on the principle of similar pronunciations, “钅尔” (ni) and  “石田” (tian) were given to element 113, Nihonium, and element 117, Tennessine, respectively. The Chinese symbol of element 118 – Oganesson – will be pronounced “ao”.”

CAS news release, May 11, 2017

The device consists of a major living space and two plant greenhouses.” The major cabin covers 42 square meters the size of a very small urban apartment while each of the plant cabins is 3.5 meters high and 50 to 60 square meters in area. The major cabin hosts four bed cubicles, a common room, a washroom, a waste-treatment room and an animal-raising room. Eight Chinese volunteers will live in “Yuegong-1,” a simulated space “cabin for the next year, all civilians and elite postgraduate students from Beihang University. The first four two men and two women, will stay in the cabin for 60 days, then be replaced by the second group, also two men and two women, who will stay there for 200 days. After that, the first group will return for the remaining 105 days. The purpose of the new program is to test the stability of the BLSS when astronauts with different metabolic rates take turns to live in the cabin and when they face sudden situations such as blackouts.”

CAS news release, May 11, 2017

The 227,100 m2 park is planned as a future one-stop whole for life sciences users. Haier Biomedical, through 10 years of innovation, has become China’s largest low-temperature cold chain equipment brand. Its ultra-low temperature refrigerators and other medical low-temperature cold chain storage devices support biological (Biobank) and other life science support projects. The construction of the new industrial park is an important step for Haier into the biomedical industry.

China Bio news release, May 11, 2017

The material is inspired by Gecko bionics and based on an inorganic membrane to which hydrogel nanofibers are added on both sides. The material exhibits ultra-high friction and adhesion in an acidic liquid (pH 2), and switches rapidly to a state of ultra-low friction and stickiness in a basic solution (pH 12). Additionally, the two sides of the material can stick and slide independently of each other.

CAS news release, May 11, 2017

The researchers focused on the visual cortex, the ‘seeing’ part of the brain, which they analyzed through hundreds of fMRI scans of people looking at a single handwritten number or letter, along with the image they were looking at. Using a deep generative multiview model (DGMM) algorithm, they could reconstruct the original images from the fMRI scans.Decoding more complex pictures will need a more sophisticated approach, involving AI for reconstruction.

CAS news release, May 11, 2017

Since the launch of the precision medical program in China in 2015, the field of gene sequencing has rapidly developed. 11 of the companies are publicly listed. From a detailed analysis of invested money, over 75 % of these companies have received investments between millions and 100 millions of Yuan. As the rate of company formation increased year by year, some experts fear that a “gene sequencing bubble” might eventually develop.

China Bio news release, May 9, 2017

Acording to the ISAAA Southeast Asia Center, transgenic cotton grows on 29 million ha in China, with an application rate of 95% and more than 5 million farmers involved in the plantations. China also has 8,550 hectares of transgenic papaya, and 543 hectares of transgenic poplar. Global acreage of GM crops was 185.1 million ha in 2016.

China Bio news release, May 9, 2017

One of their plant factories in Anxi, Fujian province, covers 1 ha and supposedly is the largest vertical farming complex in the world. By inventing energy efficient LEDs and recyclable hydroponic solutions, as well as new energy-conserving methods the factory’s overall energy consumption was cut by 25 percent compared with a first facility. San’an Sino-Science was founded in 2015 by the San’an Group and the CAS Institute of Botany. The second-generation plant in Anxi can produce 1.5 tons of vegetables a day, such as lettuce and cabbage. It takes about 20 days for a sapling to reach maturity in the plant factory, but 40 to 60 days in a conventional farm. China has 160 million hectares of farmland dedicated to growing vegetables. To grow them, farmers use more than 311,000 metric tons of pesticide and 59 million tons of fertilizer a year.

CAS news release, May 9, 2017

According to the report, China’s health care products market size was about 120 billion Yuan in 2015 and increased 2.7 times from 2005 (about 45 billion Yuan). The United States and China occupy half of the global health care products market. According to WHO standards, China’s current population defined as healthy is only about 15% of the total population, whereas the proportion population considered “sub-healthy” is as high as 70%. Roland Berger’s 2016 consumer market research shows that women are more concerned about beauty, bowel fat reduction, health during pregnancy and other, whereas men are concerned about liver and kidney health, sports nutrition, etc. The elderly are concerned about bone-related products, sleep, and cardiovascular health products.

https://www.rolandberger.com/en/Publications/pub_mes_study_2017.html

Tea is the world’s most ancient and most widely consumed caffeine soft drinks, the current global more than 160 countries, 3 billion people drink tea tea. It is widely believed that tea originated in China’s Yunnan, Sichuan and other places. Tea trees are commercially grown on more than 3.8 million hectares of land on various continents. In 2014, the world’s tea production was 5.56 million t. Since 2010, an international consortium around Lizhi GAO, CAS Kunming Institute of Botany, has studied Camellia sinensis var. Assamica tea and assembled about 3.02 billion base pairs in a high quality genome reference map, coding for 36,951 proteins. The results show that the expression level of key genes related to tea polyphenols and caffeine biosynthesis in tea plants is significantly higher than that in non-tea plants, and their expression patterns relate to genes for theanine biosynthesis.

CAS Kunming Institute of Botany solves tea genome

A study team led by Xiaodong FANG from Anhui Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics (AIOFM), Hefei Institutes of Physical Science, and Mingming MA at CAS’ University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), designed and synthesized a series of polyol-polypyrrole (polyol-PPy) composites. Doped with tetra-armed polyethylene glycol (PEE), the PEE-PPy film achieved a tensile strength as high as 125 MPa, and the elongation-at-break was about 75%. The tensile toughness was 73 MJ/m3, similar to natural cocoon silk (70 MJ/m3). Additionally, the PEE-PPy film had a conductivity of 115 S/cm.

CAS news release, May 3, 2017