Chinese Advance Work on "Hidden" Electromagnetic Portal

'Hidden Portal' Concept Described: First Tunable Electromagnetic Gateway

While the researchers can't promise delivery to a parallel universe or a school for wizards, books like Pullman's Dark Materials and JK Rowling's Harry Potter are steps closer to reality now that researchers in China have created the first tunable electromagnetic gateway.

The work is a further advance in the study of metamaterials, published in New Journal of Physics (co-owned by the Institute of Physics and German Physical Society).

In the research paper, the researchers from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and Fudan University in Shanghai describe the concept of a "a gateway that can block electromagnetic waves but that allows the passage of other entities" like a "'hidden portal' as mentioned in fictions."

Technorati Tags: physics, China, electromagnetic gateway

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China: Plague Transmitted by Fleas

Raw Story » Dead dog’s fleas suspected of spreading China plague

A dog is suspected to be the origin of an outbreak of pneumonic plague in northwest China that has killed three people and left 10,000 under strict quarantine, state media reported.

Ziketan, a remote town in a Tibetan area of Qinghai province, has been locked down since Saturday in an effort to contain the spread of the highly virulent disease.

One patient was in critical condition and eight others were infected, most of them relatives of the first fatality, a 32-year-old herdsman, or local doctors, Xinhua news agency said.

Initial tests had shown that the herdsman’s dead dog was the likely origin of the outbreak, Xinhua reported late Wednesday, quoting professor Wang Hu, director of the Qinghai disease control bureau.

Wang said it was likely that the dog died after eating a plague-infected marmot and that the man became infected when he was bitten by fleas while burying the dead dog. He died three days later.

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Asia-Africa Relations: Confucius Institutes

Asia Times Online :: China News, China Business News, Taiwan and Hong Kong News and Business.

A features writer for the Economist once insisted that the Mandarin character for Africa means "wrong continent". This is perhaps because there is a perception that the teachers have frequently been wrong-headed about Africa, and have tended to get it wrong whenever they have moved out of their comfort zones in trading and infrastructure development.

Such a view is not entirely right, and China has in recent years taken great pains to show the world that it is a well-rounded emerging power with a complete strategy for engagement in places like Africa.

Its Confucius institutes are an interesting feature in this show of sophistication. The Hanban - the Chinese National Office for teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language - began spreading them from 2004 when it set up the first one in the South Korean capital of Seoul.

Top Chinese officials have made no effort to disguise the propaganda value they perceive in the spread of the institutes, but so far very little in the way of a coherent strategy has emerged as to how they can be integrated into the mainstream of Chinese foreign policy, which nowadays is driven, as everyone knows, by a mercantilist view of global politics and economics. Africa has not been spared this ambiguity.

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Chinese Bloggers Watch Iran

There is an engaged, relatively mainstream population that is thinking seriously about what Iran’s experience says about China. Several bloggers, for instance, are using the unrest in Iran as a way to benchmark China’s movement toward democracy. Wu Jiaxiang, an intellectual and former researcher in the General Office of the Communist Party Central Committee wrote the other day:

For over ten years, Iran’s presidential elections have had turnout exceeding seventy percent, so much so that the closing hours had to be delayed until midnight. What does that show? It means that indifference towards democracy comes from the lack of democracy. There is no excuse for non-democracy.

Mao Anlin, another blogger, goes one step further:

Even Iran, such a religious country, has had so many years of elections. Candidates can squabble, the results can be questioned, the legislature can talk, and Khamenei can keep right on working. We [in China] insist on appointing every single candidate in advance, even for the chief of Macau. This is more than a little lagging behind Iran.

link: China on Iran (Not the Party Line): Letter from China: Online Only: The New Yorker

Forty Acres, A Mule, A Work Order, and Oh Yes, We'll Take your Firstborn Child

The [Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy] reported at the time that the Chinese authorities had issued notices warning Tibetan farmers of serious consequences or even confiscation of lands of any one who refused to do farming. Chinese authorities in Kardze later reportedly went on an “arrest and beating drive” against farmers who continued to defy authorities' order to till their farmlands. According to TCHRD, many of the Tibetan youths in Kardze were arrested and detained by Chinese authorities after taking part in anti-China protests last year. “Even if people in Kardze wishes to till the lands, there is hardly any manpower left behind to do the farming work,” the centre said in a statement.

link: One suffers gun shot, three seriously wounded in Chamdo - www.phayul.com

What Thou Lovest Well Is Still Limited by Your Server Capacity

“We don’t have the heart to cut off the Iranians,” said Shiyu Zhou, a computer scientist and leader in the Chinese effort, called the Global Internet Freedom Consortium. “But if our servers overload too much, we may have to cut down the traffic.”

link: Op-Ed Columnist - Tear Down This Cyberwall! - NYTimes.com