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Erle Frayne Argonza
Gracious day to everyone!
From China comes a news item highlighting the gap between technology innovations and the business community. The observation is that the gap is a yawning one. This gap has been observed among other Asians that proceeded with the industrialization development track couples of decades back.
The new is contained below.
[Writ 07 October 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila. Thanks to SciDev database news.]
Chinese innovation ‘too isolated’
Jia Hepeng
23 September 2008 | EN | 中文
Flickr/Pere Tubert Juhe
[ZHENGZHOU AND BEIJING] For China to become a world leader in innovation, it should address regional differences and promote corporate input, according to a report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
The report, released this month (11 September), acknowledges that with spending on research and development (R&D) matching that of Germany, China is already a global player in science and technology.
But the country lags in innovation capability and performance compared to OECD countries with a similar level of R&D investment, although China ranked second in global publications levels in 2006.
According to the report, China’s innovation system is not fully developed and inadequately integrated. It describes the system as an “archipelago”, a large number of “innovative islands” with insufficient links between them.
Current regional patterns of R&D and innovation create too great a physical separation between knowledge producers and potential users, the authors say.
In addition, although foreign investment in China has increasingly contributed to innovation, the domestic business sector has been slow to make productive use of accumulated R&D investment, human resources for science and technology, and related infrastructure, the report indicates.
The Chinese government is looking to address this. For example, a recent study found that of 22 Chinese biotechnology firms investigated, all had received government funding (see Regulations ‘hinder’ China biotech investment).
But besides funding companies directly, “it is important for China to improve the framework conditions for innovation, which will contribute to building an innovation culture and provide the conditions and incentives for firms to shift their attention to innovation,” Gang Zhang of the OECD Directorate for Science, Technology and Industry and one of the report’s authors, told SciDev.Net.
And Feng Jun, president of Beijing Huaqi Information Digital Technology, a leading Chinese technology company, says the government has distributed its funding too evenly among companies, instead of focusing on a few to gain key breakthroughs.
Link to the executive summary of OECD report
Erle Frayne Argonza
So many of our scientific models of ecological reality need gross revisions. I am aware for instance that the model for the ‘water cycle’ is badly flawed, yet the scientific community has not done much to revise it.
Here is another facet of reality—climate change—where the existing models are found to be flawed. From East Asian scientists, notably Beijing, come the observation that the existing models ‘ignore brown carbon’. It need not belabored that the models must be revised.
The news about the observations regarding the model is contained below. What is gladdening is that scientists were able to uncover the flaw, which will ensure revision of the model and the practical technologies coming out from the labs later.
[28 August 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila. Thanks to SciDev database news.]
Current climate models ‘ignoring brown carbon’
Sun Xiaohua and Jia Hepeng
15 August 2008 | EN | 中文
Smog over Bangkok, Thailand
Flickr/gullevek
[BEIJING] Scientists have found that air pollution from East Asia contains an abundance of ‘brown carbon’ particles and say that atmospheric models need updating to incorporate their effect.
Current climate models take into account two types of aerosol carbon — organic carbon and black carbon — that arise from the burning of fossil fuels or biomass.
Black carbon strongly warms the atmosphere by absorbing light, while organic carbon absorbs light at a negligible level and has no warming effect.
It has already been claimed black carbon plays a much larger role in global warming than estimates made by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (see Black carbon climate danger ‘underestimated’).
But this approximation is too simple, according to Peter Crozier, an associate professor at Arizona State University (ASU) in the United States, whose team published their research in Science last week (8 August).
According to the authors, the method that is currently used to measure the warming effect of different types of particle doesn’t take into account the wide variations that can occur between types of carbon from different sources.
They instead used a technique based on a specialised type of electron microscope to directly determine the optical properties of individual carbon particles, and found that samples taken from above the Yellow Sea, east of China, have an abundance of brown carbon particles.
“Brown carbon has light absorbing properties that lie between strongly absorbing black carbon and materials that only scatter light and do not absorb,” co-author James Anderson, a research scientist at ASU’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, told SciDev.Net.
He adds that brown carbon both cools the Earth’s surface and warms the atmosphere, resulting in a complex role in global warming, hence the necessity to incorporate it into climate models.
Hu Guoquan, a senior scientist at the Beijing-based National Climate Centre, welcomes the study, saying it highlights the uncertainties of IPCC models.
“But more studies on the chemical structure and size of brown carbon particles must be done,” he told SciDev.Net.
In addition, Hu says, as many carbon aerosols pollutants are emitted by China or India — which have massive combustion of fossil fuels and biomass — judging their accurate warming or cooling effect must be done cautiously and avoid claims without sufficient scientific evidence, as this will contribute to determining the nations’ responsibilities in global warming.
Erle Frayne Argonza
Magandang araw! Good day!
Is there any other news that brightens up the world better than the latest Olympics games held at Beijing? Amid the world’s running agog in quagmires of hatred and wars, caused largely by demonic minds among the West’s oligarchy, there are still developments that enchant us even as they stir up hope in a planet that had now moved into a new Dark Age.
The latest Olympics held at Beijing deserve a plethora of praises from everyone, with the greatest accolades given to the People’s Republic of China. With excellent playing grounds nestled on an exquisite ‘bird’s nest’ structure of stunning architectural wonder, excellently organized and provided for, what else can you say of this Beijing sponsorship of the games? Only those rowdy Western Establishment media had raised an unparalleled noise to detract China from its developmental goals, a smear campaign orchestrated by who else other than the oligarchs of the West who would never want any country other than the West’s to go up the prosperity ladder. Only the Herd quacks believe in Western media black propaganda anyway.
It turned out that China performed stunningly well not only because of the superb preparations, but also because its athlete earned the top number of gold medals. Of course the oligarchic Western media has that issue of age-related protest and that uninterestingly impertinent news about the stabbing by a Chinese of a kin of a delegation from some country, and what did those largely impertinent dung earn? They never made a dent on China’s performance in the games. They only highlighted the dirt and corruption of Establishment media generally.
For us Asians, China’s Olympic rise is very, very important. We now acknowledge that, as far as the development path is concerned, China leads the rest of the pack here in Asia. This is also true for the sports development path which China showed to be doubtlessly the leading nation. The event likewise formally signaled that China was opening its doors to the world as a great civilization once again, which revives notions of an earlier period of Middle Kingdom when a great mighty civilization opened itself up to the world. These developments are happening among the most dynamic regions of Asia by the way, and there is China to lead us here which causes elation.
To recall, there was the pestering question of supposedly polluted air in Beijing which is nothing more than Establishment media’s baloney detraction. The United Nations Environmental Planning or UNEP released a note that shows a different situation altogether: that China has been moving positively towards transforming its vehicular power needs from gas to natural gas and alternatives, greening the city altogether, and other positive moves that belie the media mogul’s and oligarchs’ noisy propaganda. The same issue of pollution, to note, were also raised in the other city venues of the past, and amid such pestering eco-fascist and media quackery, all of the games ensued in the same cities anyway.
There was also that noisy propaganda about China’s handling of Tibet. How little do people realize that the Dalai Lama of Tibet has become a pure politician, and is being handled by the British Intelligence from behind the scenes. The Tibet fiasco was largely orchestrated by operators of the British Empire, the same oligarchic circles who recently egged Georgia to practice some guzzling gun power on Russia over South Ossetia, the same oligarchs who were responsible for the destruction of Afghanistan and Iraq, the same oligarchs who orchestrated the chaotic inflationary situation of gas and grains, the same oligarchs who are now pushing for a World War III that will start with Iran’s bombing sometime late this year or next year.
Just the same, despite the slanders, fiascos, and mudslinging tirades by the Western oligarchy against China, the Beijing Olympics went on. And with China’s lead along the way, Asia’s athletes did shine somehow. This is just the start, and hopefully the Olympics can be sustained across the decades so that future generations can see the re-nascence of Asia into a powerhouse of Hope such as what Asians did in the latest Olympic feat.
So, to the organizers of the Olympics in Beijing from the side of the People’s Republic of China, cheers of victory! Hail the Middle Kingdom!
[27 August 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]
Erle Frayne Argonza
Magandang araw! Good day!
Intellectual property planning has been a fairly neglected area in planning engagements by developing economies. Often than not, development planning presumes that citizens will patent or copyright their innovations, with the effect of scaling up patents at turtle pace.
China has shown the way to accelerate the pace of patenting by innovative citizens precisely by addressing the problem of intellectual property planning. This is new area in development planning, as one can see from the news caption below.
Happy reading!
[03 August 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila. Thanks to SciDev database news.]
New intellectual property plan to boost Chinese patents
Hepeng Jia
24 June 2008 | EN | 中文
Flickr/H@r@ld
[BEIJING] China has launched a national intellectual property rights (IPR) strategy to encourage innovation and strengthen its legal framework in the field.
The National IPR strategy outline, published earlier this month (5 June) by China’s State Council, aims to turn China into “a nation with an internationally leading level of creating, using, protecting and managing IPR by 2020″.
The strategy aims to boost the number of patents held by Chinese citizens over the next five years.
It also seeks to establish an effective legal protection system for genetic resources and indigenous knowledge.
Although China is one of the world’s top three nations in terms of patents issued (see China hits top three in patent applications), most of its patents for invention are owned by foreign companies operating in the country. According to China’s State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO), 53 per cent of the 67,948 invention patents issued in 2007 were filed by foreign individuals or companies.
The strategy will see China’s government revise laws on patent, trademarks and copyrights. The website of SIPO quoted its head, Tian Lipu, as saying that the new patent law will be submitted to the legislature for approval before the end of the year.
Previous Chinese patent law focused on the protection of the patent, but this revised law will also outline how a patent can be used and benefits shared, as well as how to avoid patent abuses.
The strategy will also seek to increase the ability of government departments and courts to help protect IPR.
Sun Pingping, a spokesperson for SIPO, told SciDev.Net that although there are many existing laws and regulations on IPR, the national strategy can coordinate their functions by guiding their revisions, refining and updating when necessary.
Sun Guorui, an intellectual property law professor at Beihang University in Beijing, says that the main significance of the strategy is it makes IPR creation and use a core value for policymaking.
“For example, in the science community, awards or promotion are given mainly as the result of publishing high-impact papers. But in the future, the number of patents filed can be an important indicator of scientists’ output,” Sun told SciDev.Net.
He adds that the strategy will need to be followed by more concrete action implemented by different government departments. For example, the health ministry will have to finalise its measures on how to protect the patents of traditional Chinese medicine.
Erle Frayne Argonza
We peoples of Southeast Asia have been caught up in the cycles of droughts and heavy rains for as long as our memories can recall. The El Nino comes every now and then, bringing either a rainy season or too dry a spell for an entire crop season, thus endangering our own agricultural production.
Biotechnology innovations incidentally are very dynamic in the region, or in East Asia as a whole. The breeding of maize varieties that are resistant to drought has been among the forefront of research & development. Below is a news caption of the R&D efforts in maize by exemplar countries Philippines, Indonesia, and China.
Happy reading!
[31 July 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila. Thanks to SciDev database news.]
A-maizing: Asia’s drought-resistant maize varieties
Source: CIMMYT
16 June 2008 | EN | 中文
Flickr/thisfrenchlife
Maize is a staple crop in South-East Asia, both as a food and animal feed. But the farmers that grow the crop often live in drought-prone areas, where poor soil and disease exacerbate poor harvests.
To counter this, the Asian Maize Network was created, funded by the Asian Development Bank and led by CIMMYT (International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre).
The network, running from 2005–2008, brings together scientists from China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam to develop drought-tolerant maize varieties — and deliver them to farmers.
Genetic material from drought-tolerant varieties was supplied by CIMMYT and funds put into setting up testing programmes in all five countries.
The first varieties have already been released for further testing in individual countries, and many more are in the pipeline, with the eventual aim of providing them to poor farmers at affordable prices.
The scientists involved say the project has helped them both in terms of capacity and partnership building. Many agree that the training and working with researchers from other countries has given them a new perspective on their work.
“I’m motivated to see that what I’m doing will really help farmers,” says one.
Erle Frayne Argonza
I’m sure everybody still recalls the near-cataclysm that struck China recently that buried towns and villages and led to thousands of deaths. China and the planet is still mourning for all those beloved fellows swallowed up by turbulent Earth.
That event challenged China to predict earthquakes more accurately. Quake prediction follows uncertainty principles, which do not cohere with the uniformitarian paradigm of geology. Any move today to reverse the situation of relatively unpredictable quakes is very welcome.
Happy reading!
[24 July 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila. Thanks to SciDev database news.]
Chinese scientists call for better quake prediction
Jia Hepeng
3 June 2008 | EN | 中文
The seismic signal from the Sichuan earthquake
Flickr/MacEsc
[BEIJING] Scientists in China are calling for improvements in earthquake prediction, including the establishment of an early-warning system and methods for scientists to share quake information.
The calls come after the Sichuan earthquake — the country’s most serious earthquake in 30 years — hit on 12 May (see China displays openness in earthquake response).
Ni Sidao, a professor of geophysics at the University of Science and Technology of China, says that although current scientific methods cannot accurately predict an earthquake, an early-warning system could alert people to leave for open spaces before buildings are destroyed.
Ni made his remarks last week (25 May) alongside other scientists at the China Science and Humanities Forum in Beijing, operated by the Graduate University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
He said that P waves — early-arriving non-destructive seismic waves — can be used to detect and calculate the scale of an earthquake within ten seconds with the aid of computers.
In the case of Sichuan, the later-arriving, destructive seismic waves (S waves) took 30 seconds to reach Beichuan — the most seriously hit county, 90 kilometres north of the epicentre — and nearly 100 seconds to reach Qingchuan County, 200 kilometres from the epicentre.
People in Beichuan could have had a ten-second warning of the earthquake with an early-warning system, allowing some to move outdoors and trains to stop to avoid derailing, said Ni.
But he admitted that current seismic monitoring stations in most parts of China are too isolated to form a warning network.
Ren Luchuan, a senior researcher at China Earthquake Networks Centre (CENC), welcomes Ni’s suggestions, but says such a system is very difficult to operate.
“[The time difference between P and S waves] is so short that it is very hard to establish a system to notify residents,” he told SciDev.Net, though he says such a system could be used for key sites such as nuclear power stations, which could close reactors.
Longer-term prediction seems to be just as fraught with problems.
In the latest issue of the Chinese language journal Science and Technology Review (28 May), Wu Lixin from the Chinese University of Mining and Technology, Beijing, and colleagues report an abnormal temperature rise in the thermal satellite images of the eastern front of Qinghai–Tibet plateau — the fault that caused the earthquake — 20 days before the Sichuan earthquake.
The authors suggested this rise could be caused by tectonic plate movement, and could be an indicator for earthquake prediction.
But Ren says many factors could cause the abnormal temperature increases, leading to uncertainty in using temperature change to predict earthquakes.
In a separate article published in the same issue, however, Wu writes that there should be more intensive, accurate and consistent analyses of thermal satellite images, and that these should be frequently checked against seismic wave monitoring.
In addition, Wu says an earthquake information sharing system should be established, so that general researchers can analyse or input data about abnormal observations into a system for professional seismologists to screen.
BRIGHTER PROSPECTS FOR RICE CULTIVATION IN CHINA
Erle Frayne Argonza
Good day!
Let me now shift my attention a bit and diversify our BrightWorld updates with news from across the oceans.
Here is a news, culled from the SciDev Forum materials sent to its members. The search for high-yielding varieties of grains is a continuing one, and had definitely not reached a dead end yet in biotech innovations.
Happy reading.
[19 July 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]
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Scientists find ‘yield-improving rice gene’
Jia Hepeng
14 May 2008 | EN | 中文
The newly discovered gene may help improve rice yields
Flickr/Cbcastro
[BEIJING] Chinese scientists have identified a rice gene that could simultaneously control the crop’s yield, plant height, and number of days to flowering.
Publishing their study in Nature Genetics online this month (4 May), researchers from Wuhan-based Huazhong Agricultural University (HZAU) say the gene could play a role in improving rice productivity.
The scientists found that in individual rice breeds, the three traits appear strong –– or weak –– simultaneously.
“This fact makes us infer that the three traits were controlled by a single gene,” says Xing Yongzhong, one of the lead authors and a professor at HZAU.
Previous studies have found that a region on chromosome seven of rice can regulate all three traits but the specific gene involved had not been discovered.
The HZAU scientists mapped the relevant gene site on chromosome seven and located the specific gene named Ghd7. They discovered that shorter rice plants with fewer grains per cluster of flowers and earlier flowering do not have the gene Ghd7.
When they transferred Ghd7 into Ghd7-free varieties of rice, they found that time to flowering was increased by 105 per cent, they grew around 70 per cent taller, and the plants had more rice grains per cluster of flowers.
Numerous rice genes have been reported to control such traits alone, but Ghd7 is notable because of its large, multiple effects on an array of traits, write the authors.
Xing told SciDev.Net that the gene could be incorporated into varieties with traditional breeding. “Although we have used the genetically modified method in the study, we need not adopt this method in the practical seeding because the gene is identified from the rice itself.”
The team of scientists also studied the status of Ghd7 in 19 rice varieties from rice growing in a wide geographic range in Asia and found five different versions of the gene.
“We are exploring the subtypes of Ghd7-containing rice that are most suitable to their growing regions, so as to cultivate the most appropriate high-output rice varieties,” Xing adds.
Huang Dafang, former director of the Institute of Biotechnologies of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, welcomes the study as a major scientific breakthrough.
But he says that usually, multiple genes regulate the traits related to rice yields, and whether the Ghd7 could play its claimed role in promoting yields needs further research and seeding tests.
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