The academic degree committee under the State Council, China’s cabinet, has voted through a proposal to establish an integrated circuit (IC) university program, which will be designated a first-level discipline, in a move which industry observers said represents the country’s latest effort to nurture homegrown talent in the semiconductor industry amid a US-led crackdown on China’s tech rise.
The degree’s establishment will be officially announced after it is approved by the State Council.
The microelectronics and solid electronics university program, which involves semiconductor courses, is currently designated a second-class discipline.
Analysts said the establishment and first-class designation of the IC program will allow more universities to open colleges to train IC students, so as to make up for a drain in China’s talent pool. Also, IC-related subjects will have access to more resources and funding.
Tibetans perform Reba dance 热巴舞(丁青热巴) , a centuries-old Tibetan tradition to pray for good luck and harvest in Qamdo, Southwest China’s Tibet Autonomous Region. Reba dance was recognized as a national-level intangible cultural heritage of China.
Reba dance is a kind of dance performed by Tibetan “Reba” artists. Reba is a comprehensive art form featuring tambourine and incorporated with rap music, Xie (song and dance), acrobatics, Qigong (Chinese breath exercise) and Reba play. It is performed by groups of traveling artists who make a living as performers (normally, a family is the basic unit). According to historical records, Reba is founded by Milarepa, the second patriarch of the Kagyu sect of Tibet Buddhism in the 11th century. Reba is inherited from the “witchcraft” and “Totem Dance” of Bon, a Tibetan primitive religion. It enjoys long history, abundant contents, unique style, excellent skills, interesting lines and fancy mask and absorbs essences of ancient Zhangzhung Culture, religious culture and folk art. Therefore, it is a treasure among brilliant ancient culture and art of Tibetan and possesses high artistic value and research value. Reba Dance is distributed in Qamdo, Gonpo and Nagchu of Tibet and such Tibetan inhabited regions as Yunnan, Sichuan, Qinghai and Gansu.
Dengqen Reba is a kind of drum dance and a comprehensive art form incorporated with rap music, song and dance, acrobatics and Qigong (Chinese breath exercise). Originated from Khyungpo Dengqen, Dengqen Reba is said to be created by Khyungpo Mila Thopaga, or Milarepa. It is said that Qamdo enjoys a tropical climate where elephants roamed. People killed the elephants and spread their skin onto the ground. They then danced on the elephant skin as a form of god worship, and from this Reba dance was born. Dengqen County can be seen as the cradle of Reba dance.
A ceremony marking the completion of the BeiDou-3 Navigation Satellite System BDS-3 was held at the Great Hall of the People. Check out a brief history of China’s global navigation system decades in the making.
China aims to make the application of the BeiDou Satellite Navigation System (BDS) the best among all other navigation systems, and be more inclusive to provide value-added services including short messaging, satellite based augmentation and international search-and-rescue services, the spokesperson of BDS and director general of China Satellite Navigation Office Ran Chengqi said Monday.
So far, BDS has been applied in industries such as transportation, public security, disaster relief, farming and urban governance, as well as being integrated into China’s key basic infrastructure construction including electricity, finance and telecom, Ran said at a press briefing Monday in Beijing.
In particular, BDS-based high-precision applications played a positive role in China’s fights against COVID-19 and the recent flooding in southern China. BDS has been applied in China-Europe freight train transportation, the construction and operation of high-speed trains between Beijing and Zhangjiakou, North China’s Hebei Province as well as civil aviation, Ran said.
“We will further promote the integration of BDS with newly emerging technologies, such as 5G, mobile communication, big data and the mobile internet, which will create new economic growth points,” Ran said.
Chinese leaders launched the full global service of the BeiDou-3 on Friday. BDS is China’s largest space-based system and one of four global navigation networks, alongside the US’ GPS, Russia’s GLONASS and the European Union’s Galileo.
BeiDou is able to tell others where the user is located, a strong advantage compared with GPS, Huang Haihui, vice president of the UniStrong Science & Technology Co, told the Global Times Monday.
This application is particularly useful in search and rescue missions that can return a feedback to the people calling for help, Huang cited the example of obtaining the location of oceangoing vessels when they are in distress.
“This is China’s own system meaning it’s independently controllable, so there is no need to worry about the navigation usage in some special areas such as national defense,” he noted.
Ran said that more than 500 types of equipment components have been made in China and the domestic production rate of the BDS-3’s key components is 100 percent.
BDS’ global positioning accuracy is better than 10 meters, with a timing accuracy better than 20 nanoseconds, and its performance in the Asia-Pacific region is even better.
Both satellite distribution and the number of BeiDou satellites gives it an advantage in accuracy, stability, reliability and usability, Huang said, adding that wider applications for BeiDou could be in precision farming and autonomous driving at port wharfs.
The output of China’s satellite navigation and location-based services industry has been growing more than 20 percent annually on average, reaching 345 billion yuan ($49.47 billion) in 2019, and is expected to exceed 400 billion yuan in 2020, Ran said.
BDS and navigation-relate shares surged on Monday, with UniStrong and BDStar Navigation gaining by the daily 10 percent limit.
Researchers at the Australian National University (ANU) recently said that they had achieved “a new efficiency record” for hydrogen cells that can convert water into hydrogen simply using sunlight.
Co-author Shen Heping, who develops perovskite cells, shows a part of the cell in the lab of Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra, Australia, July 15, 2020. Researchers at the ANU recently said that they had achieved “a new efficiency record” for hydrogen cells that can convert water into hydrogen simply using sunlight.
The approach outlined in the ANU study used inexpensive semiconductor materials and resulted in a 17.6 percent solar-to-hydrogen efficiency, according to the researchers.
“We hold China as a potential trading partner, as a country that has pulled tens of millions of people out of poverty in a short period of time, and as a country growing into a respectable nation amongst other nations,” Feinstein said, in comments first reported by the Washington Free Beacon. “I deeply believe that.”
Dianne Goldman Berman Feinstein is an American politician serving as the senior United States Senator from California. She took office on November 4, 1992. A member of the Democratic Party, Feinstein was Mayor of San Francisco from 1978 to 1988.
Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam announced on Friday that due to the current severe COVID-19 situation in the city, the Legislative Council (LegCo) election scheduled for September has been postponed to September 5 next year. Experts and local lawmakers said the decision prioritizes public health and aims to ensure fairness in the election.
Lam announced the decision at a press conference on Friday, saying that it was not made for political reasons, but for public health.
