The development of the emergency communication system has made a great success in China. However, for the emergency system to have a systematic application capability, one should solve the problem of the cooperative emergency, and the fine operation. In this paper, the world wide developments of the mission planning techniques are reviewed at first. Then, the applications of the mission planning techniques in the emergency communication field are discussed. Finally, a construction strategy is proposed based on on the mature technological achievements of the mission planning.

This paper systematically analyzes the features of the emergency communication, the evolution of the marine emergency communication technologies at home and abroad, and the current situation and problems of the marine emergency communication in China. To meet the demands of the emergency communication in various marine activities, an integrative constructive idea of the emergency communication system is proposed, with the sky, the outer space, the coast and shore, the sea surface and the underwater integrated. On this basis, the emergency communication application patterns in the corresponding classic marine emergency scenes are discussed, to provide a reference for the development of the marine emergency communication technology and the system establishment in the near feature.

This paper discusses the application mode, the policy and the methods of the emergency communication abroad and the establishment and the development of Chinese emergency communication system, focusing on the use of the satellite communication system in the emergency field. A prediction is made about the new technology,the new direction and the future development of the satellite communication.

The solar-powered unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) flying at the near space enjoy a long flight time and a high flight height. The air communication service system can be established when the solar-powered UAVs carry the communication loads and it has a great application prospect in the field of the emergency communication. This paper reviews the development of the solar-powered UAVs platform at home and abroad and the application in the area of communication. By analyzing the characteristics and the application directions of the communication system based on the solar-powered UAVs, three typical applications and their key technologies and benefits are analyzed. It is shown that the near space communication system can be constructed by using the solar-powered UAVs. The communication system can be used for the long-term wide area and is flexible in use. And it will play an important role in the field of the emergency communication.

The emergency telecommunications play a critical role in the disaster risk reduction and it is of paramount importance providing communication services during an emergency. In recent years, it becomes a new direction of development applying the aerostat as a new emergency communication platform. In comparison with the conventional manned or unmanned aircraft, the aerostat provides a larger coverage area and a less delay of the transmission time with longer flight duration. At present, some typical types of aerostats, including the high-altitude super pressure balloons and the low-altitude tethered balloons, have reached the principle demonstration or test flight stages. One of the best-known projects is the Google's Project Loon, which has been successfully used to provide emergency telecommunication services in Peruvian floods and Puerto Rico hurricane disaster. In this paper, the super pressure balloon and tethered balloon technologies and the current development status are reviewed, as well as some key issues related to the aerostat as an communication platform.

In particle physics of 2017, most works focused on testing the standard model (SM) and searching for signals of new physics beyond SM. In this article, we review the hot topics in the past year, including direct measurements of SM and new physics, heavy flavor physics and CP violation, QCD and new exotics, neutrino physics and dark matter. The future development of particle physics is also prospected.

Transient electronics, fabricated by degradable materials, can dissolve in natural environments after completing the default task. The corresponding decomposition products are biologically safe, offering an efficient approach to solving the pollution caused by electronicwastes. Transient electronics can compare favorably with the traditional devices through advanced fabrication technology in terms of performance, exhibiting promising applications in fields of environmental protection, medical equipment and information security. In this paper, we summarize the progresses in transient electronics in 2017, including degradable materials, degradable procedures, fabrication technology and transient devices.

Since the birth of laser, optics and photonics have penetrated into all aspects of people's life. This article summarizes the 2017 major progresses in this field and draws up an inventory of ten optical research directions that are likely to have enormous impact on human existence and way of life in the future. The related research work and progress are briefly reviewed as well.

This paper summarizes the worldwide milestones of research and development of nuclear energy science and technology in 2017. The hotspots and frontier in the nuclear energy science and technology field are briefly reviewed. Some important advances in Generation IV reactors, advanced technologies of Generation III reactors, virtually digital reactor, advanced nuclear materials, the treatment and disposal of radioactive waste and spent fuel, and the relevant law and public policy of nuclear safety are covered.

In order to review the significant progress made in the field of organic functional materials in 2017, the latest research achievements are summarized in terms of organic semiconductor flexibility, organic solar cell efficiency, organic light emitting diode efficiency, magnetic effect of organic photovoltaic devices, and spin photovoltaic device design. The novel phenomenon and principle of organic functional materials in the field of organic electronics, organic optoelectronics and organic spintronics are reviewed and analyzed, and the future development in this field is also predicted.

As an irreplaceable material, polymer has been widely used in all aspects of our life. With the joint efforts of researchers, significant achievements have been accomplished in supramolecular polymer, graphene, high-performance materials and nanomultifunctional materials of polymer science. This paper makes a brief introduction to several outstanding results accomplished in 2017, including stretchable polymer semiconductor, flexible energy storage materials, efficient and accurate preparation of asymmetric polymer brushes, carbon dioxide adsorption, plastic recycling and reuse,and application of polymers in drug detection. Among them the research in extensible polymer,in particular, has made great breakthroughs in the year and seems soon applicable to use in wearable electronic equipment.

Astronomy is a field full of discoveries. The year 2017 witnessed a lot of new discoveries and achievements. In this article, we list 9 top events, in two main categories:Research progress and development of astronomy instruments. The research progress ranges from the detection of neutron star merger to the discovery of habitable exoplanets and the strangest supernova explosion, as well as the most accurate cosmic-ray spectrum measured by China's DAMPE satellite and the first interstellar object, Oumuamua. The development of instruments includes the observation of Sgr A^* by the event horizon telescope, successful launch of China's first X-ray satellite, HXMT, the grand finale of Cassini, and the news release from the FAST telescope. These new telescopes have been running well and we expect them to produce more interesting results in the years to come.

Space science is a multi-disciplinary scientific and technology area to investigate the fundamental processes and natural laws of physics, chemistry and life in solar-terrestrial space, solar system and the universe, using space infrastructure as the main working platform. This paper reviews the major strategic activities, research progresses and new space infrastructures of space science in 2017. The contents include President Trump re-established National Space Council, the Luxembourg parliament adopted the draft law on the exploration and use of space resources, space infrastructures assisted discovery of gravitational waves produced by merging of neutron stars, China achieved a breakthrough in space quantum technology, DAMPE got high-precision measurement results of the electron energy spectrum, Cassini spacecraft ended its historic exploration of Saturn, and the lunch of the first ever neutron-star mission.

In 2017 the world witnessed a number of important events in the area of natural gas hydrate. This paper reviews some of them, including natural gas hydrate production trial test of Nankai Trough in Japan, natural gas hydrate production trial tests of Shenhu area and Liwan area in South China Sea, approval of natural gas hydrate as a newly found mineral, and other important events. Also reviewed are some research hotspots such as the application and research of natural gas hydrate petroleum system in Shenhu area in South China Sea, hydrate kinetic inhibitor, exploitation method, sediment stability, environmental effect and other research topics. It is noted that Chinese researchers and engineers have made some prominent contributions in this area. Future research focus of natural gas hydrate is analyzed as well.

This article samples the hot research topics in information technology in 2017. We review the reinforcement learning that showed great promise in AI application, the quantum computer research which reached a 50 qubit competition stage, smart home that is increasingly popular among general public, and more mature robot simulation technology. Meanwhile, we also experienced major challenges in 2017. For example, AI algorithms were found to be biased due to existing data containing human bias; researchers found fake news had major impact on 2016 U.S. Presidential election; bitcoin value increased dramatically and was more like a bubble; ransomware threatening computer users was getting worse.

In 2017, nearly all sub disciplines of artificial intelligence(AI) have gained a series of progresses. AI has widely applied into many fields. This paper selects human-computer fighting, driverless car, computer vision, natural language processing, smart speaker, medical treatment with AI, and AI chips as the representatives of the field, so as to review the hot topics of AI in 2017.

The brain-computer interface (BCI) establishes a direct communication pathway between human brain and the external world by real-time decoding the brain activities accompanying the thinking process. BCI is rapidly developing and maturing, receiving an increasing interest from the industry. In this review, we introduce the system-level achievement and key technological progresses in the past 2017, with future development trend prospected as well.

In 2017, newly approved therapies brought hope to the treatment of cancers. These included the CD19 CAR-T therapies for patients with B-cell precursor acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) that is refractory or relapsed, and additional indications for checkpoint inhibitors to treat solid tumors. It is worth noting that, for the first time in the FDA history, a treatment (anti-PD-1 antibody Keytruda) was approved to treat patients with unresectable or metastatic solid tumors as long as the tumor is positive for a biomarker referred to as microsatellite instability-high (MSI-H) or mismatch repair deficient (dMMR). Progresses were also made in targeted therapies. For example, the FLT3 mutant inhibitor, in combination with chemotherapy, was approved as the first new treatment for acute myeloid leukemia (AML) in more than 25 years. The review focuses on the new therapies, either approved or showing great promise in clinical trials, which may change the paradigm of cancer therapies.

Drug R&D focus on breakthroughs and new progress in the field of life science and biotechnology. At present, drug R&D related disciplines become increasingly intersecting, new methods and technologies emerge rapidly, constantly improving the efficiency of drug R&D and innovating the way of disease treatment. From the perspective of new drugs approved by FDA in 2017, with the biotech drugs developing fast and the breakthrough therapy certification promoting drug innovation, unmet needs in the clinic are turning into the pursuit of the industry. This paper reviews the breakthrough progress and research hot topics in the field of drug R&D in 2017, exhibiting the direction and new trends to people in this field.

In 2017, Chinese agriculture sciences obtained further development. Crop molecular breeding, germplasm resources, plant protection and pest control, animal genetics breeding, diseases control of livestock and poultry, horticulture science, molecular biotechnology, crop tillage cultivation and agricultural mechanization, agricultural product processing and storage, agricultural environment and sustainable development, and other fields, have harvested a large number of new results and new technologies. This artide reviewes the development of Chinese agricultural science and technology in 2017, including the molecular design breeding in rice, cloning of male sterility gene Ms1 and Ms2 in wheat, cattle and sheep and other livestock and poultry breeding, prevention and cure of diseases such as foot and mouth disease and bird flu, tomato flavor parsing, genetic transformation and DNA sequencing technology, mechanization planting management and processing, and potato processing technology.

Insect toxicology research is very important for the development of new insecticides and the management of insect resistance. This article reviews the 2017 progresses on the application of gene editing technology in insect toxicology research, mode of action and resistance mechanism of insecticides, molecular regulation mechanism of insect resistance, and insecticide toxicology related genomics of insects. The future of systematic characterization of toxicology-related genes function of insects, further understanding of the insect toxicology, and developing new management tactics for insect resistance based on the results of insect toxicology research are also prospected.

We summarize the outstanding research advances of paleontology in 2017, including discoveries of the earliest fossil records, macroevolution, unique growth strategy for the Earth's first trees, meticulously preserved fossils and their behavior in ambers, egg accumulation with 3D embryos of pterosaur, new fossils from Morocco and the pan-African origin of Homo sapiens, and Late Pleistocene archaic human crania from Xuchang.

In 2017, the research progress in the field of water environment was still remarkable. We overview in this paper the significant developments and breakthroughs in 2017 according to the research findings published in theby top academic journals or the most influential achievements. Considering the various types of water bodies, the researches on natural waters are reviewed in terms of rivers and watersheds, lakes (reservoirs), oceans, groundwater, glaciers, and wetlands, as well as water treatment technologies. It is hoped that this paper can give valuable reference for understanding the advances of water environment science.

Soil pollution may directly affect natural environment, agricultural production, and human health via the food chain. Therefore soil heavy metal pollution and remediation is one of the key research subjects for social development. A great number of research achievements were made in this field in 2017. This paper selects some of the important outputs from the publications to describe the typical progress in the year. The selected cases include research progress on spatial and temporal analysis on sources, tracing and identifying, monitoring and risk assessment, pollution process and transformation, mechanisms and enhancement of phytoremediation, stabilization of soil heavy metals, effects of remediation on soil biochemical properties, and safe utilization of contaminated soils.

Along with the process of scientific development, controversial debates, making scientific content more rich and diversified, contribute to the advancement of science. Gene editing, artificial intelligence, head transplant and other hot issues aroused the ripples in science of 2017. This paper selects to review the 10 events of high social concern in science and technology of 2017 in order to comb for readers the science and technology development trend.

Wideband digital phased array radar is a promising technology to monitor ocean environment. It can realize wide sea area, multi targets and high precision sea area monitoring. The key component of wideband digital phased array radar is digital RF transceiver chips. This paper briefly introduces the development and technology of integrated digital RF transceiver chips. In this paper, we discuss and analyze several key technical problems. The analysis results suggest that broadband digital phased array radar could be the best candidate for the next generation ocean surveillance.

With the rapid development of China's sea observation technologies and data collection methods, we have an ever expanding amount of observed data with more and more complexity. Therefore, the traditional data storage and processing techniques cannot effectively manage and analyze the big ocean data. Meanwhile, the regionalization and the distribution of these data become an challenge for a unified data management, during the data mining process. From the perspective of the big data life cycle, this paper reviews the technical principles of the existing open source big data framework in areas of data acquisition, storage, processing, intelligent analysis, security protection and data governance, focusing on their applications for the big ocean data.

Clinical trials on various types of cancers come up with abundant fruits, as benefited from the blooming of the precision medicine, the idea of which has been developed significantly in recent years. The clinical practice of the precision medicine, however, is still in its infancy. Rapid growing demands for informative and reliable data-/knowledge-bases of biological and medical science call for an integrated data analysis of multiple "-omics" data and a novel clinical trial design tailored for the precision medical research. The introduction of the Electric Health Record (HER) and the standardized ontology system is essential for the optimal operation of the clinical decision support systems (CDSS). It is urgent to have a proper policy on the informed consent, the privacy and the confidentiality, and a targeted genomic screening. Guidelines ensuring the maximized efficacy and the minimal false positive rate is yet to be sought for. Professional education is of great help for the proper application of the genomic testing in the clinical practice.

The rapid development of the ubiquitous computing and wearable devices witnesses a new challenge in the natural hand gesture recognition:to free the users from the constraints of the environment and the devices and help the users interact with the environment in a natural and effective way. And the mid-air gesture recognition is one of the effective methods, capable of dealing with the challenge. This paper describes the definition of the mid-air gesture at first, and then analyzes and summarizes the existing hand gesture recognition methods, based on the computer vision, the ultrasonic signal and the electromagnetic wave. At last, this paper discusses the applications of the mid-air gesture recognition, some open questions and the development in the future.

Most of rare diseases are hereditary diseases, characterized by low incidence, numerous varieties and diverse phenotypes, and therefore it is difficult to diagnose rare diseases timely and accurately in clinical practice. With the advances in the molecular genetics, the molecular diagnostic techniques, and the gene sequencing and omics techniques, a significant progress has been made in the diagnosis of rare diseases in recent years. On the basis of traditional gene detection techniques, the next-generation sequencing technology has been rapidly developed and widely used in the diagnosis and the research of rare diseases. The next-generation sequencing technology is costeffective and of high capacity over the traditional gene tests, and is well developed for the clinical use. The third generation sequencing also shows a potential diagnostic value. Although the traditional enzymatic detection techniques play an important role in the diagnosis of rare diseases, they fail to meet the surging diagnostic demands. Studies demonstrate that the rise of the proteomics and the metabolomics enables an accurate diagnosis of a variety of rare diseases. The computer-assisted initial diagnosis also sees a bright future, combined with the molecular imaging and the bio-information technologies. Technological advances have enhanced the ability to diagnose rare diseases to a great extent.

With the progress of the modern information technology, the precision medicine, combined with the omics, the phenomics and the social-environmental elements, has achieved the personalized management of the diseases. In the precision cardiology, the concepts and the methods of the precision medicine are applied to the field of cardiovascular diseases, with large-scale, systematic and innovative researches to support the pharmaceutical development, the risk assessment, the disease diagnosis and the management, leading eventually to the relief of the disease burden and the improvement of the life quality. Meanwhile, the development of the precision cardiology faces technological, social and ethical challenges. With the advances in researches and clinical applications, the precision cardiology will prove its value in the combat with the cardiovascular diseases and improve the population health.

For rare neurologic diseases, a clear etiology is often not available, and one sees a progressive course of the diseases with a diversity in phenotypes, which poses great challenges for the diagnosis and the treatment. Recent years have witnessed a growing role of the precision medicine in dealing with rare neurologic diseases. The precision medicine has shown a great promise in exploring the pathogenesis, refining the diagnosis, improving the treatment and assessing the onset risk. In addition, the precision medicine can serve as the link between the basic medicine and the clinical practice, which provides an innovative model of the disease diagnosis and treatment. Despite difficulties in the resource integration and the omics data integration, the rapid progress of the bioinformatics and the information technology makes more promising the prospect of the precision medicine in dealing with rare neurologic diseases. The precision medical research is expected to have a leap forward in the diagnosis and treatment of neurologic diseases.

According to the National Institutes of Health(NIH), the precision medicine is defined as an emerging approach for disease treatment and prevention, with considerations of the variance in genes, environment, and lifestyle for an individual patient. In recent years, new developments in the basic researches, the neuroimaging, the surgery, the neurologic disorders, especially, the neuro-oncology studies, have shed light on the future of the neurosurgery. With the continuous progress of the cancer genomics, the targeted therapy, the stereotactic radiosurgery and the proton therapy, the tumors can be treated precisely, while an increasing number of therapeutic methods can also be found for the non-neoplastic neurologic disorders. This paper reviews the latest techniques and advances of the anatomical structure, the functional localization, the surgery, the diagnosis and treatment of the neoplastic and non-neoplastic disorders of the brain, demonstrating that the neurosurgery has entered a precision era.

The rare diseases are characterized by an incidence less than 6.5/10000, which are both an ideal field of the precision medicine research and a significant area of clinical practice. The study of rare endocrine diseases, including the multiple endocrine neoplasia (MEN), the neonatal diabetes, the Cushing's syndrome and the congenital leptin deficiency syndrome, witnesses the development and the impact of the precision medicine. Based on a review in this respect, we discusses the future trend of the precision endocrinology in China. The precision medicine applied in the endocrine diseases such as the osteoporosis, the diabetes, and the obesity enables a better assessment of the individual risk of the endocrine diseases and can also help subclassify the diseases. Consequently, an individualized therapy could be realized. Furthermore, the medical informatics applied in the precision endocrinology may help the progress of building a big data platform and cast light in the new therapy of multifactorial diseases. The precision medicine of the rare endocrine diseases will become more prominant in a near future with the development of the sequencing technology and the establishment of the big data platform.

A large part of rare diseases are caused by genetic factors, making them difficult to be cured using the conventional small or large molecular drugs. Nevertheless, the gene therapy could potentially correct such absence or abnormality of body functions caused by certain genetic disorders, thus bringing better quality of life to those rare-disease patients. Currently, many clinical trials of gene therapies are carried out, and some gene therapies have already been available on the market. The viral vectors are commonly used for the gene delivery. In this paper, a variety of viral vectors for the clinical gene delivery are discussed, including the adeno-associated virus (AAV), the retrovirus, and the lentivirus, focusing on their researches, applications, and developments in clinical trials of rare diseases. Furthermore, the advantages and disadvantages of the viral vectors are evaluated, and the potential applications, as well as the research directions of gene therapies are suggested.

To mitigate severe accidents (SAs) in nuclear power plants (NPPs), filtered containment venting system (FCVS) is designed to prevent the potential containment overpressure failure through the filtered venting process. So far, many investigations and research works have been initiated or resumed particularly about the reinforced FCVS, which is expected to become the standard configuration of most NPPs. The NPP safety regulation, the safety regulation of nuclear power plant design (HAF102) issued by the Chinese NNSA, requires that NPPs should have venting systems with adequate filtration. Now, either most NPPs of operating reactor units under construction or more units planned in China are going to be equipped with FCVS, with priority of Venturi scrubber type system. At present, major nuclear energy companies, research institutions and universities are initiating or accelerating research and engineering projects on FCVS designs with enhanced performance.

Through simple rules and local interactions, social groups exhibit robust, scalable and flexible global behaviors, which are useful for applications in engineering areas. In this paper, we first introduce collective behaviors of biological systems, such as colonies of ants, flocks of birds, colonies of bees and schools of fish,and summarize the properties of these social groups. Then we analyze the key techniques of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarms, including mass UAV management and control, swarm perception and situation sharing, multiple UAV autonomous formation flight, and swarm cooperative decision making. Afterwards, we briefly sort the UAV swarms that take inspiration from the self-organized behaviors of social animals Finally, we outline open problems and possible research directions in collective motion.

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarm confrontation will be an important combat mode for UAVs in the future. It is coordinated airborne dogfight between two adversary UAV swarms when one side attempts to intercept the other. UAVs in the conflict have the abilities of self-organization and self-adaption and the property of human-like thinking. By sensing environment, UAVs can evaluate their surrounding situation and take actions to their advantages, like target attack, evasion, separation, concentration, coordination, fire support, etc. according to their behavior regularities. The interaction process between UAVs and environments, as a whole, exhibites nonlinear dynamic characteristics UAV swarm confrontation is a nonlinear dynamic complex system and also is an emerging research field, therefore, it has received extensive attention. This paper reviews the recent research advances on UAV swarm confrontation, analyzes and summarizes its key techniques as well as discusses related study thoughts and approaches. The paper is also expected to be a reference to the research of modeling of UAV swarm confrontation.

The highly dynamic nature, uncertainty and complexity of the flight environment compose the main challenges to the design of autonomous unmanned aerial systems (UAS). Recent advances in artificial intelligence and high performance computing technologies provide an opportunity for the further development of autonomous UAS. This work introduces the definition and connotation of autonomous control of UAS, summarizes the state of the art technology in this field, and proposes candidate solutions to the main challenges from the perspectives of IQ, EQ and AQ.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have drawn significant interests worldwide due to the huge potential of being applied to both civilian and military areas. Autonomy is considered as one of the most challenging issues in the research and design process of UAVs. Firstly, classifications and system architectures of UAVs are presented in this paper. Secondly, since sense and avoid (S&A), fault detection and diagnosis (FDD) and fault-tolerant control (FTC), and cooperative control are regarded as the key techniques for autonomous control of UAVs, the principles of the three key techniques are described; and the latest development on the integration of the three key techniques, known as fault-tolerant cooperative control (FTCC), is also presented. Then, the key UAV technique applications to aerial refueling and forest resources and fire monitoring and detection are introduced. Finally, technical challenges and future directions are discussed.