China: Building an innovator
When it comes to translating its own research into practical applications, China falls short. A forum in Shanghai put the spotlight on ambitious plans to accelerate the process.
The dominance of big teams in China’s scientific output
Modern science is dominated by scientific productions from teams. A recent finding shows that teams of both large and small sizes are essential in research, prompting us to analyze the extent to which a country’s scientific work is carried out by big or small teams. Here, using over 26 million publications from Web of Science, we find that China’s research output is more dominated by big teams than the rest of the world, which is particularly the case in fields of natural science. Despite the global trend that more papers are written by big teams, China’s drop in small team output is much steeper. As teams in China shift from small to large size, the team diversity that is essential for innovative work does not increase as much as that in other countries. Using the national average as the baseline, we find that the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) supports fewer small teams than the National Science Foundation (NSF) of the United States does, implying that big teams are preferred by grant agencies in China. Our finding provides new insights into the concern of originality and innovation in China, which indicates a need to balance small and big teams.
Research on velocity distribution in semi-dry flue gas desulfurization tower
As an accurate high-quality instantaneous measurement technology, particle image velocimetry (PIV in acronym) has applied widely in single-phase flow and multiphase flow. The velocity distribution in semi-dry FGD tower directly influences gas-solid mix and contact situation. In base of the tower, gas-solid two-phase flow field is more complex, and has the quite tremendous influence to the overall system desulphurization efficiency. This paper utilized PIV to study velocity distribution in Semi-dry flue gas desulfurization tower and obtained velocity distribution.