04/09/2019
- Two classrooms on Nanjing campus were chosen for pilot project
- Camera automatically captures students’ faces without their cooperation
Students pass through a facial recognition turnstile at China Pharmaceutical University in Nanjing. Photo: Weibo
A university in eastern China has installed a facial recognition system at its entrance and in two classrooms to monitor the attendance and behaviour of students.
China Pharmaceutical University in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, announced on its website on Thursday that it was one of the first higher education institutions in the country to put such a system in place.
“It can effectively solve the management difficulties and low efficiencies in a traditional attendance system, and make it easier for managers to track their students,” Xu Jianzhen, director of the university’s library and information centre, told news website Thepaper.cn
In a pilot project, two classrooms were equipped with an attendance system using facial recognition software, with a camera that automatically captured the faces of students in class without their cooperation, the university said.
“Besides attendance, the system installed in the classroom can provide surveillance of the students’ learning, such as whether they are listening to the lectures, how many times they raise their heads, and whether they are playing on their phones or falling asleep,” Xu told the news website.
“The school is taking action to cut down on students skipping class, leaving classes early, paying for a substitute to attend classes for them and not listening in class,” he said.
The plan was not well received online, with some critics raising privacy concerns for staff and students.
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“What kind of talent are they trying to cultivate?” a user of the Twitter-style Weibo network asked. “I’ve never seen such a method.”
Another wrote: “If this system was being installed in Europe or America, they’d be sued and the school would have to close down.”
But Xu said the university had consulted the police and sought legal advice, and was told the system would not be considered an invasion of privacy as classrooms were public spaces.
“You are complaining about [a system] that’s meant to urge you to learn? Are you a student?” he told the news website.
A spokesman said China Pharmaceutical University was using a facial recognition system to improve class attendance. Photo: Weibo
The university would seek feedback from teaching staff before deciding whether to install facial recognition systems in all of its classrooms, according to the report.
In May last year, a school in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, installed cameras to monitor pupils’ facial expressions and attentiveness in class as part of a “smart classroom behaviour management system” to give teachers real-time information on their students.
Elsewhere, facial recognition has been used to catch unlicensed drivers in the southern technology hub of Shenzhen, jaywalkers in Shanghai, and criminal suspects at public events across China.
Source: SCMP
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29/04/2019
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- Fusion reactor built by Chinese scientists in eastern Anhui province has notched up a series of research firsts
- There are plans to build a separate facility that could start generating commercially viable fusion power by 2050, official says
The Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) device – or “artificial sun” – in Hefei, Anhui province. Photo: AFP/Chinese Academy of Sciences
A groundbreaking fusion reactor built by Chinese scientists is underscoring Beijing’s determination to be at the core of clean energy technology, as it eyes a fully functioning plant by 2050.
Sometimes called an “artificial sun” for the sheer heat and power it produces, the doughnut-shaped Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) that juts out on a spit of land into a lake in eastern Anhui province, has notched up a succession of research firsts.
In 2017 it became the world’s first such facility to sustain certain conditions necessary for nuclear fusion for
, and last November hit a
of 100 million degrees Celsius (212 million Fahrenheit) – six times as hot as the sun’s core.
Such mind-boggling temperatures are crucial to achieving fusion reactions, which promise an inexhaustible energy source.
EAST’s main reactor stands within a concrete structure, with pipes and cables spread outward like spokes connecting to a jumble of censors and other equipment encircling the core. A red Chinese flag stands on top of the reactor.
A vacuum vessel inside the fusion reactor, which has achieved a temperature of 100 million degrees Celsius – six times as hot as the sun’s core. Photo: AFP/Chinese Academy of Sciences
“We are hoping to expand international cooperation through this device [EAST] and make Chinese contributions to mankind’s future use of nuclear fusion,” said Song Yuntao, a top official involved in the project, on a recent tour of the facility.
China is also aiming to build a separate fusion reactor that could begin generating commercially viable fusion power by mid-century, he added.
Some 6 billion yuan (US$891.5 million) has been promised for the ambitious project.
EAST is part of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project, which seeks to prove the feasibility of fusion power.
Funded and run by the European Union, India, Japan, China, Russia, South Korea and the United States, the multibillion-dollar project’s centrepiece will be a giant cylindrical fusion device, called a tokamak.
Now under construction in Provence in southern France, it will incorporate parts developed at the EAST and other sites, and draw on their research findings.
China is “hoping to expand international cooperation” through EAST. Photo: Reuters
Fusion is considered the Holy Grail of energy and is what powers our sun.
It merges atomic nuclei to create massive amounts of energy – the opposite of the fission process used in atomic weapons and nuclear power plants, which splits them into fragments.
Unlike fission, fusion emits no greenhouse gases and carries less risk of accidents or the theft of atomic material.
But achieving fusion is both extremely difficult and prohibitively expensive – the total cost of ITER is estimated at €20 billion (US$22.3 billion).
Wu Songtao, a top Chinese engineer with ITER, conceded that China’s technical capabilities on fusion still lag behind more developed countries, and that US and
Japanese tokamaks have achieved more valuable overall results.
But the Anhui test reactor underlines China’s fast-improving scientific advancement and its commitment to achieve yet more.
China’s capabilities “have developed rapidly in the past 20 years, especially after catching the ITER express train”, Wu said.
In an interview with state-run Xinhua news agency in 2017, ITER’s director general Bernard Bigot lauded China’s government as “highly motivated” on fusion.
“Fusion is not something that one country can accomplish alone,” Song said.
“As with ITER, people all over the world need to work together on this.”
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