A few days ago, the top ten domestic science and technology news in 2023 sponsored by Science and Technology Daily and jointly selected by some academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Sciences and media personnel were announced.
The top 10 domestic science and technology news in 2023 are:
- The Central Science and Technology Commission was formed
- The main alkali tolerance genes and their mechanism of action in crops were revealed for the first time
- The domestic large aircraft C919 completed its first commercial flight
- "China's Sky Eye" found key evidence for the existence of nanohertz gravitational waves
- The preparation of 51 superconducting qubits in clusters set a new world record
- The National Space Laboratory was officially put into operation
- Mapping the development of the human immune system
- The new memristor memory and computing integrated chip was successfully developed
- The first large-scale cruise ship in China was named and delivered
- The world's first fourth-generation nuclear power plant was put into operation
01
The Central Science and Technology Commission was formed
In March this year, the "Plan for the Reform of Party and State Institutions" (hereinafter referred to as the "Reform Plan") was issued, proposing to strengthen the centralized and unified leadership of the Party Central Committee over scientific and technological work, establish the Central Science and Technology Commission, reorganize the Ministry of Science and Technology, focus on forward-looking planning, systematic layout, and overall promotion of scientific and technological work, and accelerate the realization of high-level scientific and technological self-reliance and self-reliance.
On March 5, the first session of the 14th National People's Congress opened at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. (Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Yan Yan)
Scientific and technological innovation occupies a core position in the overall situation of the mainland's modernization. In the face of the grim situation of international scientific and technological competition and external containment and suppression, it is necessary to further straighten out the scientific and technological leadership and management system, better coordinate scientific and technological forces to overcome difficulties in key and core technologies, and accelerate the realization of high-level scientific and technological self-reliance and self-reliance.
The "Reform Plan" clearly states that the Central Science and Technology Commission will be established. Strengthen the centralized and unified leadership of the Party Central Committee over scientific and technological work, coordinate and promote the construction of the national innovation system and the reform of the scientific and technological system, study and review major strategies, major plans and major policies for the development of national science and technology, coordinate and solve major strategic, directional and overall major issues in the field of science and technology, study and determine national strategic scientific and technological tasks and major scientific research projects, and make overall arrangements for national laboratories and other strategic scientific and technological forces.
The "Reform Plan" clearly states that the responsibilities of the office of the Central Science and Technology Commission shall be assumed by the Ministry of Science and Technology as a whole after the reorganization.
02
The main alkali tolerance genes and their mechanism of action in crops were revealed for the first time
Saline-alkali land has become fertile land, this is the dream of human beings for thousands of years. Now, the latest work of mainland scientists has taken mankind one step closer to this goal - they have discovered the main alkali tolerance gene AT1 and its mechanism of action for the first time using sorghum, a saline-alkali tolerant crop. Field experiments have proved that this gene can significantly increase the yield of sorghum, rice, wheat, corn and millet in saline-alkali land, and is expected to greatly improve the comprehensive utilization level of saline-alkali land.
The research was completed by a scientific research team led by Xie Qi, a researcher at the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Yu Feifei, a professor at China Agricultural University, and Ouyang Yidan, a professor at Huazhong Agricultural University, and a number of cooperative units. The results were published in Science and National Science Review on March 24.
Experimental field planted with AT1/GS3 improved rice in Baicheng, Jilin Province (aerial photograph). (Photo source: Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences)
"There are hundreds of millions of hectares of saline-alkali land in the world, and the cultivation and promotion of high-quality saline-alkali tolerant crop varieties will effectively improve the production capacity of saline-alkali land, which is of great significance to ensuring food security. Xie Qi introduced. At present, a lot of research has been made in the research of crop salt tolerance, but the mechanism of crop alkali tolerance is still poorly understood.
The research team conducted genome-wide big data association analysis on sorghum genetic resources and found a major alkali tolerance gene, AT1. The gene is homologous to GS3, a grain shape regulator in rice, and the research team also revealed the molecular mechanism of salinity tolerance in crops. Subsequent studies found that the regulatory mechanism of AT1/GS3 genes in rice, wheat, maize, and millet was also highly similar.
03
The domestic large aircraft C919 completed its first commercial flight
May 28 is a day that deserves to go down in history. On this day, the domestic C919 large passenger aircraft successfully completed its first commercial passenger flight, officially entered the civil aviation market, and started a new journey of market-oriented operation and industrialization development.
On May 28, the C919 large passenger aircraft successfully completed its first commercial flight. (Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Ding Ting)
Large passenger aircraft are known as the "pearl of modern manufacturing", which is a concentrated embodiment of a country's scientific and technological capabilities, industrial level and comprehensive strength. The C919 large passenger aircraft is the first jet trunk airliner developed by the mainland in accordance with international airworthiness standards and has independent intellectual property rights, which was established in 2007, made its first flight in 2017, and was issued a type certificate by the Civil Aviation Administration of China after completing all airworthiness certification work in September 2022.
From design, R&D, manufacturing to the completion of hundreds of flight test subjects, thousands of hours of flight airworthiness certification and certification, and then to the first commercial passenger flight, in the past 16 years, C919 has run one stick after another, overcoming one danger and one difficulty after another, making China's "big aircraft dream" step by step into reality.
Through the design and development of C919, Continental has mastered more than 6,000 civil aircraft technologies in 5 categories, 20 specialties and more than 6,000 civil aircraft technologies in the civil aircraft industry, driving collective breakthroughs in new technologies, new materials and new processes.
More than ten years of wind and rain, chasing dreams of the blue sky to the future. The first commercial passenger flight of the C919 marks the comprehensive integration of the "R&D, manufacturing, certification and operation" of the C919, the official "start" of China's civil aviation commercial operation of domestic large aircraft, and the "in-flight experience" of China's large aircraft officially entered the majority of consumers. In the future, the C919 will surely fly high and sail on a new journey.
04
"China's Sky Eye" found key evidence for the existence of nanohertz gravitational waves
The search for nanohertz gravitational waves is one of the most important issues in the field of international physics and astronomy. Using the 500-meter aperture spherical radio telescope, known as the "eye of China's sky", the Continental Pulsar Timing Array (CPTA) research team found key evidence for the existence of nanohertz gravitational waves. This is an important breakthrough in the search for nanohertz gravitational waves, indicating that the research on nanohertz gravitational waves in mainland China has reached the leading level in sync with the international level. The research results were published online in Astronomy and Astrophysical Research on June 29.
Panorama of the "China Sky Eye" taken on July 26 (drone photo, taken during maintenance). (Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Ou Dongqu)
As a low-frequency gravitational wave, nanohertz gravitational waves, with wavelengths of several light-years, are an eternal background noise in the universe. Compared to the high-frequency gravitational waves, which were first discovered in 2016, they are more difficult to "listen to" and require years of data collection.
Long-term time-measuring observations of a group of millisecond pulsars with extremely regular rotation using large radio telescopes are the only known nanohertz gravitational wave detection methods.
"Using the 'China Sky Eye', we carried out long-term systematic monitoring of 57 millisecond pulsars, and at the same time formed a Milky Way-scale gravitational wave detector to search for nanohertz gravitational waves. Li Kejia, corresponding author of the paper and a researcher at the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences/Peking University, said that the hard work paid off, and after an in-depth analysis of the data collected by the "China Sky Eye" for three years and five months, the CPTA team found key evidence for the existence of nanohertz gravitational waves.
He Zishan, chair professor at Peking University and academician of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, believes that this major scientific breakthrough has a profound impact on the evolution of galaxies and the study of supermassive black holes, and also opens a new window for gravitational wave astrophysics.
05
The preparation of 51 superconducting qubits in clusters set a new world record
Following the preparation of 10-bit, 12-bit, and 18-bit truly entangled states, researchers from the University of Science and Technology of China and other institutions have made an important breakthrough - successfully realizing the preparation and verification of 51 superconducting qubit cluster states, setting a new world record for the number of truly entangled bits in all quantum systems. The results were published online in the journal Nature on July 12.
The history of the development of the number of bits in quantum true entanglement. (Photo source: University of Science and Technology of China)
Superconducting quantum computing is widely regarded as one of the most likely solutions to be the first to realize practical quantum computing, so it has attracted much attention. As the basic unit of quantum computing, qubits are different from classical bits that are not 0 or 1 in that they can be in a superposition state of 0 and 1 "at the same time", that is, a quantum coherent superposition state.
When people extended quantum superposition to multi-qubit systems, it naturally led to the concept of quantum entanglement. Once multiple qubits are coherently superimposed, the state space represented by them will grow exponentially as the number of qubits increases. This is thought to be the root cause of the accelerating effects of quantum computing. For many years, the realization of large-scale multi-qubit entanglement has been a goal that scientists around the world have been striving for.
However, due to the larger-scale preparation of true-entangled states requiring high-connectivity quantum systems, high-fidelity multi-bit quantum gates, and efficient and accurate quantum state fidelity characterization methods, the scale of true-entangled bits has not exceeded 24 qubits.
This study greatly breaks the record of the number of truly entangled bits in a quantum system from 24 to 51, which fully demonstrates the excellent scalability of superconducting quantum computing systems, and is of great significance for the study of many-body quantum entanglement, the realization of large-scale quantum algorithms, and measurement-based quantum computing.
06
The National Space Laboratory was officially put into operation
The "Tiangong Classroom" has brought us wonderful and interesting space experiments, and more exploration of the mysteries of space is being carried out in an orderly manner in the National Space Laboratory.
At the briefing on the space application and development of the manned space program held on August 18, Lin Xiqiang, spokesman of the China Manned Space Program and deputy director of the China Manned Space Engineering Office, said that China's National Space Laboratory has been officially put into operation and has established a near-Earth space science and application system with unique Chinese characteristics.
Shenzhou-16 astronauts take panoramic images of the space station assembly. (Photo source: China Manned Space Engineering Office)
At the end of 2022, China's space station completed full construction and entered a stage of application and development that lasted for more than 10 years. At this stage, the mainland will carry out manned flights on a regular basis, and astronauts will fly in orbit for a long time to carry out large-scale space science experiments and technological experiments in many fields. China's fully completed space station is a national space laboratory with the most comprehensive coverage of space science-related disciplines, the strongest on-orbit support capacity, and unique advantages such as manned participation and uplink and downlink transportation.
On June 4, Shenzhou 15 successfully returned to Earth. In this "space business trip", the three astronauts of Shenzhou 15 successfully entered the Chinese space station, and the astronaut crew of Shenzhou 14 achieved a "space rendezvous" for the first time. On October 29, a "space rendezvous" was staged again, and the two crews of Shenzhou 17 and Shenzhou 16 met successfully on the Chinese space station. This is the first time that the mainland's first, second and third batches of astronauts are in the same frame on China's space station on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the realization of the Chinese nation's thousand-year-old dream of flying into the sky.
07
Mapping the development of the human immune system
As "guards" against the invasion of pathogens such as viruses and bacteria, immune cells are an indispensable part of the body's immune system. It is of great significance to clarify the type, differentiation and functional status of immune cells to understand immunity and reveal the occurrence and development mechanism of immune-related diseases.
On September 12, Cell published an important advance on immune cells online. Researchers from the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and other units have successfully drawn a map of the development of the human immune system with the widest coverage of tissues, the longest time span and the highest sampling density, which is expected to promote the development of the field of immunology and developmental biology in the world.
Construct a spatiotemporal map of the development of the human immune system. (Photo source: Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences)
In this study, researchers used an automated, high-throughput synthetic biology research big scientific device to build a single-cell transcriptome sequencing platform to "decode" developing immune cells, and draw a map of the development of the human immune system based on such massive data.
At the same time, they also discovered two new types of immune cells: macrophages, which are widely present in multiple tissues and organs, promote angiogenesis, and microglia, which are present outside the central nervous system.
For this research, Han Jiahuai, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and professor of Xiamen University, spoke highly of it. "This study expands people's understanding of human immune development, especially the diversity, differentiation and function of macrophages, and contributes to a deeper understanding of the function and regulatory mechanisms of the immune system, providing an important basis for disease diagnosis, immunotherapy and the development of new therapies," he said. ”
08
The new memristor memory and computing integrated chip was successfully developed
On October 10, a piece of news spread and rushed to the hot search on Weibo: based on the integrated computing paradigm of storage and computing, the team of Professor Wu Huaqiang and Associate Professor Gao Bin of the School of Integrated Circuits of Tsinghua University has developed the world's first memristor storage and computing integrated chip that integrates the whole system and supports high-efficiency on-chip learning Xi Xi (machine learning can be directly completed on the hardware side). The findings were published online in the journal Science.
"The integrated memory and computing chip we developed has demonstrated high adaptability, high energy efficiency, high versatility and high accuracy, which can effectively strengthen the learning and Xi adaptability of smart devices in practical application scenarios. Gao Ha introduced in an interview with reporters.
Memristor memory and computing integrated chip and test system. (Photo source: Tsinghua University)
It is understood that this chip contains all the circuit modules necessary to support the complete on-chip learning Xi, and successfully completes a variety of on-chip incremental learning Xi function verification such as image classification, speech recognition and control tasks. The results can be applied to smart terminal devices such as mobile phones, as well as edge computing scenarios, such as automobiles and robots.
More importantly, under the same task, the energy consumption of this chip to achieve on-chip Xi is only 3% of the ASIC system under the advanced process, showing excellent energy efficiency advantages and has the application potential to meet the high computing power requirements in the era Xi of artificial intelligence.
09
The first large-scale cruise ship in China was named and delivered
Building Chinese's own large cruise ships has been the long-cherished wish of generations of Chinese shipbuilders. This year, the shipbuilders' long-cherished wish was fulfilled. On November 4, the mainland's first domestically produced large-scale cruise ship "Aida Modu" was officially named and delivered. This marks that the mainland has since achieved a "zero breakthrough" in the manufacture of domestic large-scale cruise ships.
On November 4, the mainland's first domestically produced large-scale cruise ship "Aida Modu" was named and delivered. (Image source: Visual China)
It is reported that the "Aida Modu" has a total tonnage of 135,500 tons, a length of 323.6 meters, a width of 37.2 meters, and a maximum height of 72.2 meters...... This behemoth is like a "modern city on the sea".
Large cruise ships, large LNG carriers and aircraft carriers are known as the "three jewels in the crown" of the shipbuilding industry, which are extremely difficult to design and build, and are landmark projects that reflect a country's industrial strength and scientific and technological level. The successful design and construction of the "Aida Modu" marks the breakthrough of the main core technologies such as weight control, shock absorption and noise reduction of large cruise ships independently realized by the shipbuilding industry in China.
10
The world's first fourth-generation nuclear power plant was put into operation
On December 6, good news came from Shandong Rongcheng: the demonstration project of Huaneng Shidaowan high-temperature gas-cooled reactor nuclear power plant was officially put into operation at a stable electric power level and transferred to commercial operation. This is the world's first fourth-generation nuclear power plant with completely independent intellectual property rights, marking that China has taken a leading position in the field of high-temperature gas-cooled reactor nuclear power technology.
Led by China Huaneng and jointly built by Tsinghua University and China National Nuclear Corporation, the plant started construction in December 2012 and was connected to the grid for the first time in December 2021. At present, there are more than 2,200 sets of first equipment and more than 600 sets of innovative equipment in the Shidaowan high-temperature gas-cooled reactor nuclear power plant, and the localization rate of equipment has reached 93.4%.
Exterior view of Huaneng Shidaowan high-temperature gas-cooled reactor nuclear power plant demonstration project. (Photo source: China Huaneng, photo by Sun Wenzhan)
It is reported that Huaneng Shandong Shidaowan Nuclear Power Plant has gathered more than 500 units in the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain such as design and development, engineering construction, equipment manufacturing, production and operation, and has successively conquered a number of world-class key technologies. The commercial operation and commissioning of nuclear power plants is of great significance and positive impact on promoting the safe development of nuclear power in the mainland and enhancing the innovation capacity of nuclear power science and technology in the mainland.
Relying on this project, the continental system has mastered the design, manufacturing, construction, commissioning, operation and maintenance technology of high-temperature gas-cooled reactors, China Huaneng and Tsinghua University have jointly developed six key core technologies for the commissioning and operation of high-temperature gas-cooled reactors, cultivated a group of professionals with experience in the construction and operation and maintenance management of high-temperature gas-cooled reactors, formed a set of standardized management systems that can be replicated and promoted, and established an independent intellectual property system with patents, technical standards and software copyrights as the core.
Source: Science and Technology Daily