The National Science and Technology Council is considering shuttering the three-decades-old Taiwan Light Source (TLS) program and expanding the Taiwan Photon Source (TPS) project from 14 storage rings to 25 to facilitate the government’s tech diplomacy policy, an official said on Saturday.
The council is tasked with operating the TLS and TPS programs, which are responsible for producing synchrotron radiation that is often used by the semiconductor, materials science, pharmaceutical, astronomy and green energy sectors, National Synchrotron Radiation Research Center Deputy Director Wei Te-hsin (魏德新) said.
Scientists can use the range of synchrotron radiation wavelengths, which include infrared, visible light, ultraviolet rays and X-rays to atomic and nano-scale, to conduct research, Wei added.
Photo courtesy of the National Synchrotron Radiation Research Center
When initiated 30 years ago, the light source program was a third-generation synchrotron accelerator, while the TPS system, activated in 2016, is still considered one of the more powerful synchrotron accelerators in the world.
The council is considering decommissioning the TLS program as it is dated, and would be gradually expanding the TPS program until it has 25 storage rings, Wei said.
There are about 70 synchrotron accelerators across different countries, which is a clear indicator of a country’s technological development, he said, adding the open interaction between synchrotron accelerator centers would benefit researchers worldwide.
Taiwan has a special division at Japan’s synchrotron accelerator SPring-8 and at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, granting Taiwan priority access to the facilities for experiments, he said.
The Max Planck Institutes in Germany have been working with Taiwan to build an end station, and in light of Japan’s SPring-8 producing one of the highest brightness sources of X-rays worldwide, Taiwan’s centers are also considering upgrades, the council said.
Former National Science and Technology Council deputy minister Chen Tzong-chyuan (陳宗權) said the number of Science Citation Index articles published in international journals using the National Synchrotron Radiation Research Center’s synchrotron accelerator increased to 602 last year, up from 413 in 2019.
The average influence index of these articles has also increased by 11.51 last year, up from 7.39 in 2019, he added.
Upgrades to the synchrotron accelerator would help develop Taiwan’s five “trusted industries,” namely semiconductors, next-generation communication, artificial intelligence, military engineering and surveillance technologies, he said.
The upgrade would also benefit other policies, such as improving Taiwan’s general health and reducing carbon emissions, while promoting the application of synchrotron technology in semiconductors, biomedicine and next-generation green power generation, he added.
GREAT POWER COMPETITION: Beijing views its military cooperation with Russia as a means to push back against the joint power of the US and its allies, an expert said A recent Sino-Russian joint air patrol conducted over the waters off Alaska was designed to counter the US military in the Pacific and demonstrated improved interoperability between Beijing’s and Moscow’s forces, a national security expert said. National Defense University associate professor Chen Yu-chen (陳育正) made the comment in an article published on Wednesday on the Web site of the Journal of the Chinese Communist Studies Institute. China and Russia sent four strategic bombers to patrol the waters of the northern Pacific and Bering Strait near Alaska in late June, one month after the two nations sent a combined flotilla of four warships
THE TOUR: Pope Francis has gone on a 12-day visit to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore. He was also invited to Taiwan The government yesterday welcomed Pope Francis to the Asia-Pacific region and said it would continue extending an invitation for him to visit Taiwan. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs made the remarks as Pope Francis began a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific on Monday. He is to travel about 33,000km by air to visit Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore, and would arrive back in Rome on Friday next week. It would be the longest and most challenging trip of Francis’ 11-year papacy. The 87-year-old has had health issues over the past few years and now uses a wheelchair. The ministry said
‘LEADERS’: The report highlighted C.C. Wei’s management at TSMC, Lisa Su’s decisionmaking at AMD and the ‘rock star’ status of Nvidia’s Huang Time magazine on Thursday announced its list of the 100 most influential people in artificial intelligence (AI), which included Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家), Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) and AMD chair and CEO Lisa Su (蘇姿丰). The list is divided into four categories: Leaders, Innovators, Shapers and Thinkers. Wei and Huang were named in the Leaders category. Other notable figures in the Leaders category included Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Meta CEO and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Su was listed in the Innovators category. Time highlighted Wei’s
EVERYONE’S ISSUE: Kim said that during a visit to Taiwan, she asked what would happen if China attacked, and was told that the global economy would shut down Taiwan is critical to the global economy, and its defense is a “here and now” issue, US Representative Young Kim said during a roundtable talk on Taiwan-US relations on Friday. Kim, who serves on the US House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee, held a roundtable talk titled “Global Ties, Local Impact: Why Taiwan Matters for California,” at Santiago Canyon College in Orange County, California. “Despite its small size and long distance from us, Taiwan’s cultural and economic importance is felt across our communities,” Kim said during her opening remarks. Stanford University researcher and lecturer Lanhee Chen (陳仁宜), lawyer Lin Ching-chi
RSS