Top Ten Stoies on China's S&T Progresses

2004-06-13 15:07

On January 26, 2003, the top ten news stories on China's S&T progresses selected by academicians under a screening process jointly sponsored by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Chinese Academy of Engineering and the newspaper Science Times were unveiled. They are as follows:
1) Chinese scientists have for the first time in the world worked out accurate rice genome charts and accurate sequencing charts of No. 4 rice chromosome. The accurate rice genome charts completed by the Genome Information Center under the Chinese Academy of Sciences and others have covered 97% of the genetic sequencing of Chinese rice, of which 97% of the genes have found their accurate position over chromosomes with a 99.99% base pair accuracy for 94% of the chromosome sequence positioning, an internationally acknowledged criteria for accurate genome charts. In the meantime, Chinese scientists have completed the accurate sequencing of No. 4 chromosome assigned by the international genome project, which has constituted the largest individual genome chromosome worked out by China independently for its accurate sequencing, and made a major contribution to eventually unveiling the genetic mysteries of rice.
2) Successful and consecutive launch of Shenzhou III and Shenzhou IV spacecrafts. In a short period of 9 months, China has successfully launched and retrieved its two spacecrafts, which demonstrated a major progress made in China's manned space flight project.
3) China discovered its first world - class gas field with a proven reserve of 600 billion cubic meters. On the basis of a couple of years prospecting, China discovered a super large gas field in Yikezhaomeng, Inner Mongolia with a proven reserve amounting to 602.527 billion cubic meters, which is equivalent to a super large oil field with a reserve of 600 million tons. This is not only the largest natural gas field so far discovered but also the first gas field of the world-class reserve in the country.
4) The open diversion channel of Three Gorges Project called a success in cutting off the river flow. Running for a total length of 3.7 kilometers and with a width of 350 meters, the said open diversion channel has stood the most difficult river cutting — off mission in the construction of hydraulic power projects in the world.
5) China successfully developed its own third generation mobile telecommunication system. Thanks to its 3 — year painstaking R&D efforts and a huge investment nearly RMB 1 billion, China successfully worked out three third generation mobile telecommunication systems in line with national technical standards, of which TD-SCDMA has become the first Chinese proposed standards officially accepted by ITU in the history of world telecommunication.
6) China has preliminarily grasped the key technologies for designing and manufacturing modern CPU. The Institute of Computation Science under the Chinese Academy of Sciences has successfully developed Longxin I CPU, the first high performance common CPU in the country. China's first proprietary server with the core technologies named Longteng equipped with Longxin I CPU also made its birth, which demonstrates that China has basically grasped the key technologies designing and manufacturing such chips, ending up the history that Chinese information industry had no its own "heart". The said CPU chip is sized 4 mm with the maximum floating and fixing points calculation speed over 200 million times per second respectively.
7) Zhejiang Provincial Academy of Agricultural Sciences brought out the new rape species claiming the highest oil content in the world. Applied with genetic engineering techniques, the Atomic Energy Institute under the Academy developed a technology able to manipulate rape's oil composition, with which they worked out two new rape varieties named Chaoyou I and Chaoyou II, both proud of an increased oil content by 25% with Chaoyou II claiming the world highest oil content at 52.82% among its counterparts.
8) The successful development of huge laser device Shenguang II. Huge laser device Shenguang II developed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Institute of Engineering Physics has gathered a hundred and more optic instruments in an area of a football course size. It is located in Shanghai Institute of Optic Machinery under the Chinese Academy of Sciences. When eight strong laser beams hit a tiny target ball through magnifying chains in 3 dimensional arrays, a strong power equivalent to the total or several times the power generated by the whole world power grids was emitted in a blink of time as short as one billionth second and an extremely high pressure and temperature thus formed to trigger the fusion reaction. The success of Shenguang II demonstrates China's world advanced level in high power laser and laser nuclear fusion studies.
9) Chinese scientists preliminarily unveiled the mysteries of human cell senile decaying. On the basis of their many — year studies, the medical study team of Beijing University has preliminarily concluded that gene PI 6 dominating human cell senile decaying process is a key link in controlling human cell decaying process from the hereditary perspective. They also unveiled the cause of the high expression of PI 6 in the decaying, which preliminarily unveiled the mysteries of human cell decaying and is China's original contribution to understanding the decaying mechanism of human cells. It created a new approach to further addressing human cell decaying.
10) Legend's super computer. Legend Group made in the year the debut of its proprietary core technology super computer with an on — the — spot measured speed over 1000 billion times per second. The super computer has recorded a calculation speed of 1002.7 billion times per second, reached the level of 24th place among the world top 500 super computers. The ones sitting before the 24th are either manufactured by Japan or USA.