When it finds crown-of-thorns starfish preying on coral polyps, the robot rushes and kills them.

The 45-cm-long, 29-cm-wide and 22-cm-tall robot weighs less than 10 kilogrammes. Equipped with four high-power thrusters, it moves freely like a skilled diver.

The robot is an underwater observation device, designed and made by Qingdao Robotfish Marine Technology Co Ltd. Fan Ping is the company’s chief technology officer.

Fan’s team at first thought of calling it the Starfish-Killing Robot, but they eventually settled on Coral Guard.

Fan said the robot was tailor-made to protect coral polyps from the nibbling starfish and it also can fight off sea urchins.

“A coral reef is fragile and is one of the most complex ecosystems,” Fan said recently, adding that protection of coral reefs can help save tens of hundreds of other species.

More important, protecting coral reefs is significant for maritime rights and interests, he emphasised.

Fan said his company’s underwater robot is the third to prevent the threat to reefs from starfish, following those made by companies in Japan and Australia. Such robots are a welcome alternative to using chemicals and divers and they are safe and effective.

“Our robot monitoring range can reach 10 metres and it only allows 1 cm deviation from the target,” he said, adding that is quite a feat for a small robot with present technology.

The robot began its testing stage in June and it was delivered to users in September.

“The miniaturisation of robots is a trend of the future and has market potential in maritime preservation,” Fan said. “It will be no surprise to see a group of small robots operating together underwater for marine observation in the future,” Fan added.

Fan also said his company has just updated a new underwater robot that weighs less and has strong resistance against underwater currents with more advanced equipment such as a depth sensor and electronic compass. The new robot is expected to be used in aquaculture.

Fan is now designing a server and plans to establish a remote controller. After the new robot has undergone testing, people can operate the device and learn how it works by logging on to the company’s website.

A joint research team of Yonsei University College of Medicine and Ewha Womans University assembled a phthalocyanine photosensitiser (PcS) with an anticancer drug mitoxantrone (MA) to form uniform nanostructures (PcS-MA). When the nanostructures were injected into a laboratory rat with breast cancer, more than 80 per cent of the cancer cells were destroyed, the team said.

According to the research published on ACS Nano, a journal run by the American Chemical Society, the team sees PcS-MA nanostructures as “an attractive strategy for overcoming the limitations of photodynamic cancer therapy.” Photodynamic cancer therapy, also known as radiation therapy, is commonly used to eliminate residual cancer cells after surgery. However, cancer cells with a deficiency in oxygen survive even through this treatment. PcS-MA nanostructures were found to destroy such cancer cells in rats.

Professor Nam Ki-taek, one of the leaders of the research team, said that the nanostructures would need further experimenting to reaffirm their anticancer effect and test whether they are applicable to other types of cancer as well.

This is a concrete example of how financial technology (fintech), the use of information technology for conducting financial services, will bring tangible benefits to people’s daily lives.

About 60 Japanese financial institutions – including mega-banks, Resona Bank and regional banks – have already completed tests using the technology.

In March, several of them, including Internet-only banks and local banks, will launch services that enable money to be remitted easily and cheaply by using a smartphone app.

The number of banks participating in such services is expected to steadily increase.

Although each bank will decide the fee it charges for sending money, the new services reportedly will make it possible to reduce remittance fees from the current several hundred yen to about one-tenth of that amount.

Service customers will use a special-purpose app. Even if they do not know the bank account number of the person they want to send money to, cash can be sent by entering their mobile phone number or reading a QR code. In principle, money can be remitted 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Splitting a dinner bill

Such a service would be useful in cases such as when people want to split the bill after dining at a restaurant. A person could read another’s QR code while still sitting at the table, and the money would be sent straight to that person’s bank account.

SBI Ripple Asia Co, a Minato Ward, Tokyo-based company providing blockchain services, built the system through serving as its administrative office.

In the future, the service will enable money to be sent cheaply from ATMs, and allow it to be |transferred overseas at a low |cost.

Remitting money overseas currently requires a fee of several thousand yen, and it can take a few days until the money is received. Using blockchain would enable money to be sent almost instantly and is expected to significantly reduce remittance fees.

Money transfers between individuals and companies, which are intermediated by financial institutions, are centrally managed by the Zengin Data Telecommunication System.

This system requires high operation and maintenance costs because of the many layers of tight security measures put in place to ensure money is transferred securely.

It has been announced that the Zengin system is scheduled to start operating around the clock, all year-round from October 9.

In contrast to this system, the blockchain network decentralises transaction record management across many computers, meaning if one of these computers breaks, the system will not go down.

This makes it possible to create a safe, cheaper remittance system.

Moves to use blockchain for sending money are spreading among financial institutions around the world.

Spain’s Banco Santander and Britain’s Standard Chartered have already put such services to practical use, and more than 100 international financial organisations are arranging to introduce them.

A decentralised management system in which the records of transaction data are shared across many computers.

Its name comes from the fact that the transaction records are linked together like a chain.

The system is cheap to run, highly resistant to disruptions, and transaction data is extremely difficult to falsify.

Bitcoin is one service using blockchain.

According to the Consumer Technology Association, the group that hosts the show, roughly 4,500 companies and organisations will participated in this year’s event, ranging from well-known brands, such as TCL, Samsung and LG, to the startups.

Among these, CES’s data show that about 1,551 are Chinese companies, accounting for more than one third of the total. The show ends on Friday.

The over-half-century-old annual gathering is a global stage for innovators to showcase their latest technologies, gadgets and car technology.

As for this year, those like artificial intelligence, smart home and vehicles, drones, robotics, virtual reality and augmented reality are the attractive spots at the CES.

The word “Shenzhen”, the city in southern China’s Guangdong province, was associated with 652 Chinese companies last year among the 1,300 ones participating in the event, the Beijing New reported.

However, the newspaper added that Chinese companies did not gain as much applause even though nearly one third of participants were from China at that time, although Chinese-made drones were the exception.

“[Chinese] AI-powered firms will not let us down this year,” Liu Dingding, a Beijing-based industry analyst, told the Global Times.

AI: just around the corner

He added that as some AI applications are now “just around the corner”, Chinese companies are likely to become leaders instead of followers in some domains such as speech recognition, computer vision and autonomous driving.

In July, the State Council, China’s cabinet, issued guidelines on AI development, and AI projects and other areas related to AI, such as Big Data, cloud computing, quantum computing, and brain science, have also been proposed.

The guideline set a goal for China to become a global innovation centre in this field by 2030.

The total output value of AI industry is expected to exceed 1 trillion yuan.

AI has also quickly become the hottest area for Chinese start-ups, said a report by research consultancy Eurasia Group and VC firm Sinovation Ventures in last December.

The report said that investors poured US$4.5 billion into over 200 AI companies between 2012 and the third quarter of 2017.

For China’s startups, they have experienced dramatic transformation over the past 10 years, from copycat versions of existing applications to true leapfrog innovation, it said.

“Usually, China’s small- and medium-sized enterprises make up a large part of CES participants. When big players join the event, they will increasingly make the presence of Chinese tech firms felt,” Wang Yanhui, head of the Shanghai-based Mobile China Alliance, told the Global Times.

As more Chinese companies seek their presence in the international market, they have to be fully aware of hurdles such as language barriers, different corporate management structures and tightened regulations, Liu said to the newspaper.

Zheng said, “Can you imagine that two years ago, such a lot of money could have been transferred only by cash, and my clients had to drive a boat to me, and we did the business face-to-face?”

But things have changed drastically since Ningde Rural Commercial Bank introduced the mobile banking service to local fishermen.

Through its app, the bank helps its clients transfer money or apply for loans in just one minute.

Last year, Zheng received a three-year loan of 500,000 yuan from the bank at a relatively lower interest rate.

The bank has been attempting to support the development of small and micro-sized businesses in the region.

Zheng’s fishery has expanded after increasing investment. It now has 400,000 large yellow croakers, earning nearly 3 million yuan in net profit per year.

It is part of the Blue Finance Strategy of Ningde Rural Commercial Bank, which aims to support the local agricultural sector and further develop marine economics.

In Sandu Gulf port area, cage farming of large yellow croaker, prawn, abalone and seaweed has grown into a mature business, and forms a complete production chain, having about 30,000 practitioners.

Shan Qiang, president of the Fuzhou branch of the People’s Bank of China, said the central bank has encouraged local commercial banks to design special financial products to support local economic growth.

It is part of its broader strategy to implement inclusive finance in China.

Innovative financial products and services from Ningde Rural Commercial Bank include fund settlements, electronic banking, credit, and customised wealth management products for local fishermen.

By the end of October last year, the number of customers using mobile banking services reached 10,246, while that for using WeChat financing service was 3,113.

Money transferred by mobile banking totaled 3.68 billion yuan, according to data from the rural bank.

David Lipton, first deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund, wrote in an article that new digital platforms have come to play a very important role in spreading inclusive finance.

“Hundreds of millions are gaining access to the market economy in places where physical banking infrastructure is limited or absent,” he said.

“The transformative potential of marrying cell phones and banking cannot be underestimated.”

With China holding the presidency of G20 since 2016, the G20 Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion developed a new set of High-Level Principles that encourages governments to promote a digital approach to financial inclusion.

It encourages governments to promote a digital approach to financial inclusion, and is being used as a reference tool by many countries.