China’s Mega Projects: Transportation
The Grand Tour: China’s Road Network
Chinese to clone gene-edited monkeys
On 24 January, scientists at the Institute of Neuroscience (ION) in Shanghai reported that they had used gene-editing to disable a gene in macaque monkeys (Macaca fascicularis) that is crucial to their sleep–wake cycle. The scientists then cloned one of those monkeys to produce five primates with almost identical genes.
It is the first time that researchers have cloned a gene-edited monkey and proof of principle for the researchers’ plan to create populations of genetically identical primates that they say will revolutionize biomedical research. Some of the researchers are part of the new International Centre for Primate Brain Research, which has the goal of creating such populations and received government funding in November.
In Europe and the US, non-human-primate research increasingly faces regulatory hurdles, costs and bioethical opposition. This stands in contrast to China; the country’s 2011 five-year plan set primate disease models as a national goal. The science ministry followed up by investing 25 million yuan (US$3.9 million) into the endeavour in 2014.
Chinese subway tunnel 288 feet under the SEA
Chinese workers have built a subway tunnel reaching as deep as 88 metres (288 feet) under the surface of the sea.
The passage measures 8.1 kilometres (five miles) long, with 3.49 kilometres (2.1 miles) submerged under the Yellow Sea. It is the longest and deepest undersea subway tunnel in China.
It is also about 100 feet deeper than the Bosphorus rail tunnel in Istanbul, which is said to be the world’s deepest underwater railway tunnel.
Construction of the impressive cross-sea link was finished on Wednesday after having started in 2015, reported China Central Television Station.
It is part of the No. 1 Metro Line in Qingdao, an eastern metropolis with around nine million people. A former German colony, the city is dubbed China’s ‘capital of beer’ because of its famous lager Tsingdao.
A rural boy in China painted more than 100,000 copies of Van Gogh paintings
http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1055900.shtml Van Gogh didn’t sell a single painting during his lifetime, and he spent his entire life scribbling away. One hundred years later, a rural boy in China painted more than 100,000 copies of Van Gogh paintings and supported his family. This young man is Zhao Xiaoyong 赵小勇, because he heard that he could earn 3,000 yuan a month for making oil paintings, he went from being a bricklayer to a painter in Dafen village 大芬村 that specialized in producing world famous paintings. In the village of Dafen many painters like Zhao, have formed an assembly line for copying famous paintings, some are painting the eyes, some are painting the mouth. A professional painter elsewhere copying a famous painting may take 2 days, but in Dafen village painters take only a few hours. In order to copy Van Gogh’s paintings better, Zhao would study Van Gogh’s books and films. He knew the paintings like the back of his hand as he got to know them better. Zhao always dreamed of seeing the master’s work in person.
In 2014, Zhao Xiaoyong finally went to the Van Gogh Museum of Art. In the souvenir shop outside the museum he also saw his own products for sale for 10 times his price. https://news.artnet.com/art-world/chinas-van-goghs-dafen-documentary-1315319
Construction of a stainless steel core paneled house
Construction of a stainless steel core paneled house in 24 hours.
China reinvented
1-20-18 Zhongshan 3 Creeks Village
“Large Circle Line” or the “Third Interchange Contour” in southwest Moscow
Since August 2017, China Railway Construction Corporation Limited (CRCC) 中国铁建 has been building a 4.6-km section and three stations on the “Large Circle Line” or the “Third Interchange Contour” in southwest Moscow, which will be completed by the end of 2020. The CRCC hires more than 100 engineering and managing staff and over 700 workers for the project, and about half of them are Russians. The first tunnel was bored through in early April, 2019 and the remaining eight tunnels by 2020.
In February 2019, the CRCC won another contract worth over 5.64 billion rubles (about 88 mln USD) to build a 2.9 km section of the “Large Circle Line.” The city aims to increase metro lines from the current 300 km to 1,000 km by 2023.
The company designed and produced five tunneling shields capable of coping with the city’s harsh winter and complicated geological condition. The “Shengli” 胜利号 tunnel shields, with a diameter of more than 10 meters, is independently developed, designed and produced by CCRC.
