Ｓｃｉ－ｔｅｃｈ Ｉｎｆｏ

350km/h High-speed Train

One hundred trains will provide a Shanghai-Beijing express railway service from 2011, travelling at speeds up to 350 kilometers per hour, a world record for trains in commercial operation. The first train, with fully owned intellectual property rights, is expected to be rolled out in 2010.

The trains development will give priority to breakthroughs in four areas, namely basic research and arguments about speed, energy saving and environmental protection, comfort, and reliability. Furthermore, it will overcome key technical problems in aerodynamics, braking, network control, vibration and noise abatement, as well as wheel-rail wear.

China Starts Making Oil from Coal

Developed by the Institute of Coal Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China has started manufacturing oil products from coal in a pilot plant based in Inner Mongolia, using homegrown indirect coal-to-liquid (CTL) technologies. The oil is currently one of the clearest liquid fuels in the world.

It can be used directly in diesel vehicles, and exhaust emissions accord with Euro V standards. Fuel consumption is 8 to 12 percent less than diesel. Moreover, it is of better quality.

This represents Chinas first manufacturing of indirect coal-to-liquid products, and the country plans to cooperate with enterprises at home and abroad to build a production base with an annual capacity of five million tons in 2015.

China Satellite Survey and Control Extends to the Moon

According to the Xian Satellite Observation and Control Center, the exact orbit calculation technology for moon-exploration spacecraft and the comprehensive technologies for tracking moon exploration orbits and related experimental demonstrations have passed experts appraisal. The key technologies will enable China to extend its aerospace orbit observation and control from the earth to the moon.

Locating and controlling satellite orbits is considered a core technology in aerospace observation and control. It is also an important criterion by which to judge a countrys aerospace observation and control capabilities. As satellite movements begin to change from single satellites to groups, the orbits along which these satellites move are also beginning to progress from near-earth orbits and geosynchronous orbits around the earth, to deep-space orbits around the moon and other planets.

This trend is placing higher demands on orbit calculation and control technology. The Xian Satellite Observation and Control Center has successfully designed orbit observation methods and related software for locating orbits around the moon. With this technology, scientists can pinpoint and control the location of orbits in deep space. The accuracy of orbit locations calculated with this technology has reached an advanced international level.

Chinese-made eBook

The Hanvon eBook Reader is an electric paper display based device that provides a pleasant reading experience to customers. The portable device has a huge memory capacity, allowing people to carry an entire library in their pocket. It also includes internationally advanced techniques, such as full visual angle display and an anti-reflection surface. It is also flicker and radiation free.

Compared to the Amazon Kindle2 reader that costs US $400, the Hanvon eBook Reader is 20 percent cheaper.

Change-I Ends Lunar Mission with a Bang

Change-1, Chinas first lunar probe, hit the moon on March 1, at 1.50 degrees south latitude and 52.36 degrees east longitude. The event was relayed to the earth in clear real time images via a satellite-borne camera.

Change-I, which spent 494 days in space, was launched from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center atop a Long March 3-A carrier rocket on October 24, 2007. The satellite gathered 1.37 TB datum of scientific achievements, including a three-dimensional survey of the moons surface, analysis of the abundance and distribution of elements on the lunar surface, an investigation of the characteristics of lunar regolith and the moons powdery surface soil layer, and an exploration of the conditions between the earth and the moon.

China Releases

3-D Lunar Surface Map

China has successfully taken the first three-dimensional photo of the moons terrain. The photo was drafted with images sent back by Change-I, the countrys first lunar probe. The 3-D image allows observation of every corner of the lunar surface, from all angles. Such research is innovative and a technological breakthrough. The achievement will provide technical support for the later phases of Chinas lunar exploration program, such as landing site selection for a lunar module, and motion planning for a lunar robot.

New Vaccine against H5N1 Bird Flu Virus

Scientists from the Department of Microbiology at the University of Hong Kong and the US National Institute of Health (NIH) have developed a H5N1 bird flu vaccine by piggybacking it on the well-tested and highly successful smallpox vaccine. Initial tests on mice show the vaccine to be highly effective, making it a potentially sound solution to a H5N1 bird flu pandemic, which many scientists have been concerned about. Researchers say that the new vaccine has proven safe in experiments on mice and that “a single vaccine dose will provide rapid protective immune responses.” Existing facilities used for the production of smallpox vaccines can be used to produce bird flu vaccines without much trouble, thereby reducing costs. Scientists of the University of Hong Kong are going to carry out further clinical experiments in the coming two to three years, and work towards a more effective and all-purpose vaccine to fight H5N1 bird flu.

LAMOST in Trial

Operation

Su Dingqiang, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and a professor of the Astronomy Department at Nanjing University, says that the Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST) is now undergoing precise adjustment and trial operation. LAMOST is the worlds biggest fixed spectrometer telescope, promising a very high spectrum acquiring rate of tens of thousands of spectra per night. LAMOST has 4,000 fibers at a shot (there are normally 660 fibers in other countries) that can acquire spectra of at least 3,000 celestial bodies simultaneously.