The 26th China Association for Science and Technology Annual Conference, co-hosted by the China Association for Science and Technology and the People's Government of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, opened in Nanning, Guangxi on July 2. With the theme of "Cultivating New Quality Productivity to Promote High-level Scientific and Technological Self-reliance", this annual conference will hold 24 activities in six sections, including the main forum, special forums, parallel forums, Beijing Academic Week, "Science and Technology Innovation China" Guangxi Tour, and online science popularization.

At the main forum, the China Association for Science and Technology released the 2024 major scientific issues, engineering and technical problems, and industrial and technical problems. This year's collection and release activities received a total of 597 problems and problems recommended by 102 national societies, associations of societies, corporate science and technology associations, and university science and technology associations, covering ten major fields such as basic sciences of mathematics, physics and chemistry, earth sciences, ecological environment, manufacturing technology, information technology, advanced materials, resources and energy, aerospace technology, agricultural technology, and life and health. Further extensive mobilization, calling on a group of well-known academicians, experts and international organizations to participate in the condensation and recommendation of problems and problems, 129 academicians and experts went through the preliminary and final selections, strictly reviewed and checked, and finally selected the top ten cutting-edge scientific problems, the top ten engineering and technical problems, and the top ten industrial and technical problems. 30 problems and problems were released at the annual meeting, setting a "wind vane" for the production of more original and subversive scientific and technological achievements. The China Association for Science and Technology will continue to pay attention to the problems and difficulties released, guide the majority of scientific and technological workers to focus on the problems and difficulties and work together to tackle them, gather strong scientific and technological forces to cultivate new quality productivity, and continuously consolidate the scientific and technological support for high-quality development.

The ten major frontier scientific issues include:

1. Research on digital humans and robots with both emotional intelligence

2. Promote large-scale development of new energy and green transformation of coal-fired power through electricity-hydrogen-carbon coupling

3. Identify, trace and control health risks of new pollutants in multi-media environments

4. Biological basis of high light efficiency of crops

5. Transport mechanism of multi-scale non-equilibrium flow

6. Achieve efficient combustion and near-zero emission control of ammonia-hydrogen fusion fuel zero-carbon high-power internal combustion engines

7. Are the ancient humans found in China the ancestors of modern Chinese?

8. Functional emergence of flexible materials through coupling and hybridization

9. Complex associations between the microscopic and overall aspects of the human phenotype and their mechanisms

10. Study on the interaction and mechanism between immunosuppressive factors and immunotherapy in the tumor microenvironment

The top ten engineering and technical challenges include:

1. Rapid evaluation of the accuracy retention of industrial machine tools

2. Theory and technology of quality control of large-size semiconductor silicon single crystals

3. Research on the safety and reliability of high arch dams under complex geological conditions in high seismic intensity areas

4. Research on the technology of on-site detection spacecraft for ice giants and their satellites

5. Mesoscience supports the one-step expansion of multiphase reactors from laboratory to industrial scale

6. Research on key issues in the construction of deep-sea integrated energy islands

7. Spatial multi-dimensional omics guides the innovation of next generation molecular pathology diagnosis

8. Issues with autonomous engineering design software in the infrastructure sector

9. Realize brain-computer interaction in a high-throughput multimodal way

10. Achieve ecological carbon balance through efficient and gentle activation and conversion and large-scale utilization of carbon dioxide

The top ten industry technology issues include:

1. Achieving green manufacturing of drugs and functional materials through precision chemistry

2. Use clean energy to achieve low-cost and low-carbon ironmaking

3. Application of cloud-network integration technology in satellite Internet

4. Research on carbon emission monitoring methods based on digital technology

5. Development of independent and controllable high-performance GPU chips

6. Breakthrough in key industrial technologies for replacing soybean meal with corn as feed raw material

7. Establish a breeding technology system for rare and endangered Chinese medicinal materials and their sustainable development and utilization

8. The path to achieve sustainable development of high-speed and large-capacity optical transmission technology under the background of high-end chip process limitations

9. Apply AI fundus vascular health technology to promote graded diagnosis and treatment of related metabolic diseases

10. Breakthrough in the CTCS-based urban rail mobile block system