Software booming

China's software sector generated 92.3 billion yuan in revenue in the first two months of 2008, an increase of 28.7 percent over the same period of last year, according to official figures.

The growth rate was 7.1 percentage points higher compared with the same period last year.

The revenue of software products surged 25.5 percent to 33.2 billion yuan. The income of software and technology services hit 16 billion yuan, up 38.3 percent.

The revenue generated from integrated circuit design jumped 22.2 percent to 3 billion yuan.

Taiwan raid

Taiwan's IPR Police, with support from the Taiwan Foundation Against Copyright Theft (TFACT), representing the Motion Picture Association (MPA), raided a movie rental shop in Kaoshiung City, seizing a total of 40 DVD-R burners and arresting a women on suspicion of infringing Taiwan's copyright law. The charges carry sentences of up to seven years of imprisonment.

When interviewed by the authorities, the shop owner insisted that she only produced pirated movies for her customers. However the police seized 40 DVD-R burners from the premises, the second largest number ever found in a rental shop by the MPA. The police also seized 87,802 pirated optical discs, which infringed on 184 MPA member company titles.

Genetically modified rice

Zhejiang University announced that it has developed a method for creating selective genetically modified (GM) rice.

The invention was reported on the latest version of www.plosone.org, an open access, online scientific journal from the Public Library of Science.

The accidental release of GM-modified crops has been reported throughout the past few years and it has raised safety concerns over the utilization of GM-modified crops, especially GM-modified crops for industrial and pharmaceutical use.

"To make GM-modified crops selectively controllable is critical for the full utilization of plant GM-modified technology," says Zhang Zhitao, former associate director of the Rice Institute of China.

Dyson hand dryer launched

A hand dryer covering 39 patent applications has been launched in the Chinese market by the electrical engineering company Dyson.

The patents cover areas such as the airways within the dryer, the design of the slots, material selection, electronic controls and silencing technologies.

The hand dryer, called Airblade, uses 80 percent less energy than traditional warm air hand dryers. Dyson invested more than 70 million pounds to research, design and develop the product.

It is also an environmentally friendly hand dryer. Using a thin sheet of air traveling at 400 miles per hour, the hand dryer removes water from hands in 10 seconds. It can remove 99.9 percent bacteria from the air it sucks in, so the air blowing out is clean.

New Austrian fiber

Austria fiber providing giant Lenzing has introduced its MicroModal Air, a new lightweight fiber at the InterTextile in Beijing.

A patent has been filed for the new micro-fiber and test quantities are currently being produced at Lenzing headquarters in Austria.

The main applications for MicroModal Air fiber are for knitwear and high quality lingerie, says Ernst Sandrieser, general manager of Lenzing Fiber (Shanghai) Co Ltd.

This natural material is gentle to the skin and it blends with materials such as silk and cashmere to produce extremely fine, ultra-light textiles, Sandrieser says.

"The final products will target consumer markets in the United States, Japan and Europe. China is our focus as the major manufacturing base for the apparel," the general manager says.

(China Daily 04/07/2008 page9)

2013-07-17