Chinese scientists, engineers list top 10 scientific, tech stories of 2020

5. Scientists found cure for wheat's "cancer".

Fusarium head blight is a fungal disease that devastates wheat production and is difficult to control worldwide,and is known as the "cancer" of wheat. Kong Lingrang, a professor from Shandong Agricultural University, led his team to clone for the first time the gene Fhb7 from a wheat relative. The gene was proved effective in resisting the disease and was successfully transferred into wheat varieties.

According to Science, many genetic loci in wheat affect the gene's resistance but most only have minor effects. Kong's results were the first time that a gene was proved having a stable effect in improving resistance in breeding and it also has a detoxification function.

Currently, more than 30 organizations have applied the results for wheat genetic improvement of resistance to the disease. They have conducted extensive trials in East China's Shandong, Jiangsu and Anhui, and Central China's Henan provinces and yielded positive results.

6. Scientists reached a milestone for quantum supremacy.

Pan Jianwei and Lu Chaoyang, professors at the University of Science and Technology of China in East China's Anhui province, in collaboration with researchers from the Shanghai Institute of Microsystems and Information Technology, CAS, have created a light-based quantum computer called Jiuzhang.

The machine enabled China to reach its first milestone in quantum computing research that can demonstrate quantum supremacy, or quantum advantage, meaning the device can solve a problem no traditional supercomputer can tackle in any feasible amount of time. The results were published online in Science on Dec 4.

7. Scientists recreated the history of over 300 million years of biodiversity change on Earth.

The origin and evolution of life is one of the world's greatest scientific puzzles. More than 99 percent of the organisms that once lived on Earth have become extinct, making recreating the history of the Earth's biodiversity through fossil records an important way to understand the current development of the Earth's biodiversity inhabited by humans today.

Fan Junxuan and Shen Shuzhong, a professor and an academician, respectively, at Nanjing University in East China's Jiangsu province, built their own database, developed artificial intelligence algorithms and used the Tianhe II supercomputer to make the breakthrough, producing the world's first high-precision curve demonstrating the change of marine biodiversity over the 300 million years of the Paleozoic Era, with a resolution 400 times higher than similar international studies.

The curve accurately portrays several major extinctions and their effects on environmental changes. The results were published in Science on Jan 17.