Lifeboat Foundation

For vessels operating at sea, avoiding collisions is a basic operational requirement. When those vessels are operated by humans, collision avoidance is part of basic operator training. And when those vessels become highly autonomous, collision avoidance must be incorporated into complex autonomy algorithms that must be thoroughly tested before the vessels enter the water.

And that’s a very good thing.

Wish I could attend.

The Aviation Industry Corp. of China (AVIC) will promote its new generation aircraft at China’s upcoming aerospace trade show, the aircraft manufacturer said Thursday.

The company’s heavy transport aircraft Y-20 and stealth fighter J-31, the major models in the new series, will be demonstrated at the 11th China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition, which opens on Nov. 1 in the southern port city of Zhuhai, Guangdong Province.

The new planes represent AVIC’s advances toward the fourth generation of aircraft technology, the company said.

“The vast majority of space technology being developed is dual-use, and so serves Chinese security interests as well,” says Johnson-Freese, an expert on the Chinese space program and a professor at the US Naval War College. “China understands the military advantages reaped by US space capabilities for many years, and wants those same capabilities”.

On a cool Sunday evening in March, a geochemist named Sun Weidong gave a public lecture to an audience of laymen, students, and professors at the University of Science and Technology in Hefei, the capital city of the landlocked province of Anhui in eastern China. But the professor didn’t just talk about geochemistry. He also cited several ancient Chinese classics, at one point quoting historian Sima Qian’s description of the topography of the Xia empire — traditionally regarded as China’s founding dynasty, dating from 2070 to 1600 B.C. “Northwards the stream is divided and becomes the nine rivers,” wrote Sima Qian in his first century historiography, the Records of the Grand Historian. “Reunited, it forms the opposing river and flows into the sea.”

In other words, “the stream” in question wasn’t China’s famed Yellow River, which flows from west to east. “There is only one major river in the world which flows northwards. Which one is it?” the professor asked. “The Nile,” someone replied. Sun then showed a map of the famed Egyptian river and its delta — with nine of its distributaries flowing into the Mediterranean. This author, a researcher at the same institute, watched as audience members broke into smiles and murmurs, intrigued that these ancient Chinese texts seemed to better agree with the geography of Egypt than that of China.

In the past year, Sun, a highly decorated scientist, has ignited a passionate online debate with claims that the founders of Chinese civilization were not in any sense Chinese but actually migrants from Egypt. He conceived of this connection in the 1990s while performing radiometric dating of ancient Chinese bronzes; to his surprise, their chemical composition more closely resembled those of ancient Egyptian bronzes than native Chinese ores. Both Sun’s ideas and the controversy surrounding them flow out of a much older tradition of nationalist archaeology in China, which for more than a century has sought to answer a basic scientific question that has always been heavily politicized: Where do the Chinese people come from?

Continue reading “Study claims: Chinese Civilization Come From Ancient Egypt” »

Saudi’s new friend.

Once termed by Napoleon Bonaparte as the “sleeping giant,” China has now woken up and is living up to his prophecy: “The giant sleeps, and let it, for should it wake the world will shake.” China has now woken up and is shaking the world.

For 500 years China did little. While it was rich in resources it was plundered by the European powers. After the Maoist revolution, it began a process of unification and then focused on production. Many experiments were made including the ill-fated “cultural revolution.” But the Chinese determination for achieving parity on a world scale paid off. In the initial growing process, they were described as the “yellow pencil” and what not, but they persevered. And it was American President Richard Nixon who had to go to China in 1972 to meet Chairman Mao Zedong and establish relations that admitted China to the world stage.

Continue reading “Economic ties with China a key positive measure” »

More things keep being revealed; and this only what the public knows to boot.

With an aim of detecting ever object within the range, China has developed a new radar technology that is capable of detecting stealth jets, claims a Chinese firm. According to the reports, the branch of defence and electronics firm CETC — Intelligent Perception Technology created the quantum radar which can detect any target withing a 60 miles range and it was successfully tested last month.

Chinese news agency Xinhua reported that the radar uses has superior detection capabilities as it uses quantum entanglement photons which is better than traditional detection systems. The new technology will enable the radar to even detect modern aircraft that can escape the radar, uses stealth technology or baffle the enemy radar system.

Continue reading “Nothing can escape from this new Chinese quantum radar, not even stealth jet” »

New research suggests that nerve cells may be able to repair themselves by mobilizing mitochondria by removing a certain protein in cells. This may help combat neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s in the near future.

The Mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell. We all know that. It causes reactions that generate adenosine triphosphate (ATP), a source of chemical energy in a cell. A typical animal cell contains 1000 to 2000 mitochondria. Yet, that’s not all we learned in high school biology. Remember that neurons or nerve cells do not have the ability to repair themselves once damaged? Well, these two facts have stirred quite a bit of interest.

Scientists have found out that nerve cell regeneration is possible. Researchers from National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke in the US restored mitochondrial mobility in a group of mice and observed regeneration of nerve cells.

Most people might not drool over Oppo phones, but they’re going to get a feature that might get those salivary glands pumping. This morning at Mobile World Congress, the company showed off its new SuperVOOC quick-charging technology. If real-world results are as promising as they say, Oppo fans will be able to fully charge some of their devices in 15 minutes. No, seriously.

Oppo says that’s about how much time it’ll take to charge a dead 2,500mAh battery to 100 percent, and that the technology will work over traditional micro-USB and USB Type-C cables. That’s even faster than what we’ve seen out of Qualcomm’s most recent Quick Charge 3.0 demos — the fast-charging technology baked into chipsets like the Snapdragon 820 can get a smartphone from bone-dry to 80 percent in around 35 minutes. Of course, it’s sort of no surprise that Oppo can squeeze better performance out of their system — it’s more or less proprietary Oppo, so the company has full control over the battery, silicon and software involved. That’s the sort of end-to-end control that helped Huawei figure out how to supercharge smartphones, too.

In some cases, you’ll be able to get a full charge in less than 15 minutes. An Oppo hype man plugged a metal-encased reference device into a charger and continued his spiel in Mandarin. Less than ten minutes later — after he discussed an algorithm that varies current to maximize charging efficiency while keeping temperatures low — the phone was back up to 100 percent. Our natural skeptics can’t help suspect this was just a staged demo for the show, so here’s hoping we soon get to test a SuperVOOC phone for ourselves.