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.
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