cooperation

Brazil and China Continue Space Cooperation

Philip Cho — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 04:08:19 -0700

Description

As the second China-Brazil Earth Resource Satellite (CBERS-2) ends its five year mission, the new director of the Brazilian Space Agency, Carlos Ganem, professed a continued commitment to cooperate with China to fulfill Brazil’s ambitious space program. The two countries will jointly launch CBERS-3 and CBERS-4 by the end of 2008. Brazil will also depend heavily on Chinese experts in an effort to develop and launch a satellite transport rocket from the Alcantara launch facility by 2011. To this end, the BSA has just tested the second stage of a four-stage satellite launch vehicle.

Physics & Space Science

Source

Social diversity promotes the emergence of cooperation in public goods games

jorgemata — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 01:05:02 -0700

Description

Game theory: The usefulness of social diversity

Humans often cooperate with each other, tackling situations ranging from family issues to global warming - but the temptation to forgo the public good can win over collective cooperative action. A paper in this week's Nature shows how social diversity provides an escape from this apparent paradox.

Existing models treat individuals as equivalent, ignoring real-life diversity and population structure. Spanish researchers use theory to show that social diversity promotes the emergence of cooperation in 'public goods' games. Their results could help explain why people will cooperate even in the absence of concerns about their reputation or the threat of punishment.

The authors also suggest that successful communities are those in which the act of giving is more important than the amount given.

Abstract:

Humans often cooperate in public goods games and situations ranging from family issues to global warming. However, evolutionary game theory predicts that the temptation to forgo the public good mostly wins over collective cooperative action, and this is often also seen in economic experiments. Here we show how social diversity provides an escape from this apparent paradox. Up to now, individuals have been treated as equivalent in all respects, in sharp contrast with real-life situations, where diversity is ubiquitous. We introduce social diversity by means of heterogeneous graphs and show that cooperation is promoted by the diversity associated with the number and size of the public goods game in which each individual participates and with the individual contribution to each such game. When social ties follow a scale-free distribution, cooperation is enhanced whenever all individuals are expected to contribute a fixed amount irrespective of the plethora of public goods games in which they engage. Our results may help to explain the emergence of cooperation in the absence of mechanisms based on individual reputation and punishment. Combining social diversity with reputation and punishment will provide instrumental clues on the self-organization of social communities and their economical implications.

Source

Social diversity promotes the emergence of cooperation in public goods games. Francisco C. Santos1, Marta D. Santos2 & Jorge M. Pacheco2. Nature, Jul 10, 2008, doi:10.1038/nature06940

1Institut de Recherches Interdisciplinaires et de De´veloppements en Intelligence Artificielle (IRIDIA), Computer and Decision Engineering Department, Universite Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium
2ATP-group, Centro de Fisica Teorica e Computacional (CFTC) and Departamento de Fisica da Universidade de Lisboa, Complexo Interdisciplinar, Lisboa, Portugal.

China-Africa become intertwined technologically

Jason Li — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 15:02:04 -0800

Description

"Agricultural cooperation between China and Africa, which dates back to 40 years ago, has seen further development in 2007 with the impetus given by the China- Africa Cooperation Forum Beijing Summit held in November last year... Many agricultural enterprises, which emerged through the provision of soft loans and favourable policies, have taken charge of various farming projects across the African continent.Suddenly, farms are springing up like mushrooms all over the continent, especially in countries such as Zambia, Gabon, Tanzania, Guinea, Ghana, Niger and Cameroon, where the Chinese companies were very active.

And then from a Taipei Times article, 'Browning' the technology of Africa:
"Africa also offers a testing ground for Asian-designed technologies that are not yet ready for US or European markets."

...Africans genuinely need foreign technology, and the Chinese, in particular, are pushing hard -- even flamboyantly -- to fill the gap. This year, Nigeria's government bought a Chinese-made satellite and even paid the Chinese to launch it into space in May. China was so eager to provide space technology to Africa's most populous country that it beat out 21 other bidders for a contract worth US$300 million.

China's technology inroads are usually less dramatic, but no less telling. In African medicine, Chinese herbs and pharmaceuticals are quietly gaining share. For example, the Chinese-made anti-malarial drug artesunate has become part of the standard treatment within just a few years.

Likewise, Chinese mastery over ultra-small, cheap "micro-hydro" dams, which can generate tiny amounts of electricity from mere trickles of water, appeals to power-short, river-rich Africans. Tens of thousands of micro-hydro systems operate in China, and nearly none in Africa."

Though it's currently mostly a one-way relationship, will it one day become more than that?

China: Science & Technology

Source

http://farastaff.blogspot.com/2008/01/new-impetus-to-china-africa.html
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2007/12/27/2003394332

China's VLBI deep space network

Philip Cho — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 08:29:45 -0800

Description

China currently has a VLBI (Very Long Baseline Interferometry) network of four radio antennas: Shanghai (25m, all panel, X/S, est. 1987), Urumqi (25m, all panel, X/S, 1994), Kunming (40m, inner 25m panel, X/S, est. 2006), and Beijing (50m, inner 30m panel, X/S, est. 2006). These are linked via internet and optical fiber to a data center in the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory.

VLBI antennas receive extremely faint radio signals from celestial objects as far as several billion light years away. The relative three dimensional positions between antennas thousands of kilometers apart can be measured to an accuracy of a few millimeters by: 1. measuring the time difference (about 0 to .02 seconds, to a precision of 10 billionth of a second) a signal from a celestial object is received by different antennas; 2. multiplying this time delay by the velocity of the radio waves (app. 300,000 km/s); 3. repeating the procedure for three or more celestial objects (over 24 hours, one station can receive information for up to 500 celestial objects). Such systems are extremely important for both astronomical tracking and geodetic studies.

China primarily uses its VLBI network to track its Chang E lunar probe and plans to also use it for the Kuarfu solar activity and space weather program. In addition, China participates in a number of international projects such as SELENE (for measuring lunar gravity) and WSO/UV (World Space Observatory in the UV Band).

VLBI is of limited military and little commercial value. It is not surprising then, that China is willing to actively cooperate in a number of international VLBI research programs. This is in contrast to China’s abandoning the EU Galileo project. Here, commercial interests even trumped military ones. China continued to participate in Galileo even as other countries such as India objected over various national security issues. On the other hand, China pulled out of the Galileo project as soon as it announced plans to develop the Beidou-2 into a commercial GPS system. Looking over China’s different space science programs, it is necessary to compare the various factors influencing their continued cooperation or disengagement.

Signals

China's VLBI space network