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Tag Archives: China
The Prestige: China orbits practice unit
The Heavenly Palace is in orbit, or at least the first practice piece – Tiangong 1 – is in orbit. CNSA, the Chinese National Space Agency reports that the 10.5 meter cylinder is designed to practice docking and other aspects of orbital navigation over the next 3-5 years, with the ultimate goal being a functioning [...]
Posted in Commentable Also tagged CNSA, Heavenly Palace, ISS, NASA, space platform, Tiangong Leave a comment
Supercomputer race: Japan’s Fujitsu takes the lead
The bragging rights for building the world’s fastest supercomputer pass to Japan and Fujitsu’s K-supercomputer. For most people this is a fleeting tidbit of technology news, but it is one kind of milestone marking the increasing power of computers. For the computer industries in the countries involved, it is a rather big deal. In this [...]
Posted in News: Computer Power Also tagged Fujitsu, IBM, Japan, K-supercomputer, petaflop, supercomputer, Tianhe-1A 3 Comments
The China model of government Internet censorship
Some people were shocked when the Internet in Egypt and then Libya was all but shut down. They shouldn’t have been. It’s not all that hard to ‘pull the plug’ on the Internet, especially in countries with a relatively small number of Internet Service Providers (ISPs). It’s not high tech. When guys with guns show [...]
Posted in Essay Also tagged censorship, Collage, Egypt, encryption, government censorship, Internet, Internet access, ISP, Libya, proxy servers, social networking, steganography Leave a comment
Tianhe-1A: China and the world’s fastest supercomputer
It takes a coordinated team, in fact, a very large team of talented, schooled, adequately funded and dedicated people to develop a supercomputer to the pinnacle of ‘fastest in the world.’ This is the point that should not be overlooked in the headlines about China’s Tianhe-1A supercomputer – soon to be anointed as the top [...]
Posted in News: Computer Power Also tagged computer, computer science, Cray, Dongarra, Intel, Jaguar, Nebulae, Nvidia, supercomputer, Tianhe-1A, Top 500 List, USA 1 Comment
A tale of two coastal wind farm plans
One of these exists: A wind farm along the Eastern Seaboard of the United States or a wind farm at the mouth of the Yangtze River in China. If you can figure that out, then it should be easy to figure out which country aims to be a leader in wind-based energy production that includes [...]
Posted in Impact: Alternative Energy Also tagged Atlantic, coastal, Pacific, shoreline, Sinovel, USA, wind farm, wind power Leave a comment
From China to the world: High speed railway
I first thought this should just be a piece of news: China is in negotiations with 17 countries to build a network of high speed (approximately 200 mph/322 km/h) railways from London to Beijing and from Beijing to Singapore. That’s London to Beijing in two days. I reckon most people don’t know that the Chinese [...]
Posted in Impact: Clean Transportation Also tagged Asia, Harmony Express, high speed train, Kawasaki, railroad, Siemens, Transiberian Railway Leave a comment
Update: Chinese space station
The China National Space Administration has announced plans to launch the first module of a space station in 2011. The station, named Tiangong “Heavenly Place”, will consist of several modules, the first being Tiangong-1. The first module, weighing 8.5 tons and launched aboard a modified China’s Long March 2F rocket, will be unmanned. Over the [...]
Posted in News: Space Exploration Also tagged China Space Agency, Mir, Shenzhou, space station, Tiangong Leave a comment
Impact Watch: China out of the Internet?
If China removes itself from the Internet, what impact would that have? I don’t mean that China won’t have the Internet, or even that it will cut itself off entirely from international connections, but what if, for all practical purposes China operates on a different, separate Internet? What would removing the world’s largest Internet using [...]
Posted in Impact: Online Information Also tagged censorship, cyberspace, Google, Internet Leave a comment
Watch for impact: Stem cells in China
For a science or technology to have real impact on people, it must have the potential; but it must also have commitment. The first automobiles had potential, clunky though they were. The potential was seen most clearly in the United States, which then provided commitment – commercial (auto companies), governmental (roads, laws), and personal (a [...]
Shenzhou 9: Docking in space with taikonauts