On January 16, 2006, China's Top 10 Scientific and Technological
Advances of 2005, as voted by 570 CAS and CAE academicians, were
unveiled, as follows:
1. The manned flight of Shenzhou VI. At 4:33 a.m., October 17,
2005, Shenzhou VI successfully returned to Earth, and astronauts
Fei Junlong and Nie Haisheng emerged from the spacecraft, having
completed all their scheduled space experiments with human
involvement after a space voyage of 115 hours and 32 minutes.
2. Completion of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway. In the building of
this world-class plateau railway, engineers and construction
workers had to overcome permafrost, high-altitude cold, oxygen
deficiency, and fragile habitat to successfully complete their
mission. The first train loaded with materials to help Tibet
arrived in Lhasa on October 15, 2005.
3. Rollout of China's first 64-bit high-performance CPU chip for
general applications. Dragon Chip II, developed by the CAS
Institute of Computing Technology, renders a single accuracy peak
floating point operation at 2 billion times per second, with the
double accuracy speed at 1 billion times per second. With a maximum
frequency of 500MHz and power consumption between three to five
watts, much lower than similar products made overseas, Dragon Chip
II is two or three times faster than VIA's 1.3GHz processor.
4. The first ascent of the highest point of the Antarctic
icecap. At 3:16 a.m. January 18, 2005, the Chinese Kunlun
Expedition Team climbed the highest point (4,093m) of the Antarctic
Icecap (80.22' 00" S; 77.21'11" E) after a long journey of more
than 1,200 km across the Antarctic continental ice areas.
5. Publication of Flora of China. The Flora of China is the
nation's most complete and systematic flora publication of the last
hundred years. Its 126 volumes contain over 30,000 entries
including more than 9,000 illustrations.
6. The first self-spin of a single molecule. Using a
low-temperature, high-vacuum scanning tunneling microscope,
researchers of the University of Science and Technology of China
performed an "operation" on cobalt phthalocyanine molecules sitting
flat on the metal surface, which successfully placed single
molecules' self-spin behavior under control. The effort constituted
the world's first chemical reaction within a single molecule, and
local chemical reaction was also utilized to change and control the
molecule's physical properties. The development unveiled a new
broad perspective for single molecule studies.
7. Re-measurement of the height of Mount Qomolangma. On October
9, 2005, the China State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping announced
the re-measured height of Mount Qomolangma as 8,843.43 meters, with
a + or - 0.21 meter margin of error. The ice and snow depth at the
summit is 3.50 meters. The data are the most detailed and accurate
ever collected by Chinese or international surveys. The new height
is 3.7 meters less than the existing height announced in
1975.
8. Depth of 5,158 meters achieved by Continental Scientific
Drilling. Located at Maobei Village in Jiangsu Province, No.1
Well reaches 5,158 meters below ground and is the deepest of some
20 such projects of the International Continental Scientific
Drilling Program. Its completion took some four-years of
painstaking effort.
9. Development of a nanotechnology-based drug carrier. The
Shanghai Institute of Ceramics, under the CAS, has developed a
nanotechnology-based drug carrier. With a diameter of 200 nano
meters the carrier can go through blood vessels, releasing its
contents only when it reaches its therapeutic destination.
Researchers have successfully completed experiments on controlled
releases and directional delivering of drugs treating inflammation,
pain, and cancer.
10. Creation of Chinese Digital Man No.1. Southern Medical
University has created a digital man carrying a high-performance
digital camera of 22 million pixels with a 4040x5880 resolution, a
data set with 0.2-mm virtual human sections of the highest
resolution in the world. Equipped with a 540-gigabit database, the
digital man releases 60-megabit pictures.