MOU on WSO Cooperation Signed between CAS and RAS

Headed by Prof. N.A. Plate, vice president and academician of Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS), the Russian delegation has paid a visit to the Shanghai Observatory under CAS on March 27. Academician Shuhua YE and the Vice Director of Shanghai Observatory Prof. Fumin YANG have made a friendly discussion on WSO(World Space Observatiry)/UV with their Russian counterparts. Afterwards, Academician Shuhua YE of CAS and Academician A. Boyarchuk of RAS have signed the cooperation MOU.-10

Important Development of the Mechanism Research on Encephalasthenia

A nerve transmitter is a chemical substance in our brain, it is playing a key role of information transferring. In the transmitters, there is a kind of aminophenol that we call it GABA. From scientists' research, GABA is decreasing in the brain of the elders, which has led to the increase of the noise in brain. The decrease of the ratio between information and noise has made the elders uneasy to see and listen. The increase of GABA in brains may significantly improve the sensible function of the elders. This research has contributed crucial clues for the study of encephalasthenia mechanism. The achievement has been published in Science on May 2.

Presently, funded by the Knowledge Innovation Program under CAS and the National Institute of Health in U.S., a world-class joint laboratory on encephalasthenia mechanism study is developing in the Kunming Institute of Zoology. Basing on the research in this lab, the encephalasthenia mechanism will make a thorough investigation. -13

Loess Plateau Originated from 22 Million Years Ago

Why does the world's largest Loess Plateau stand in the northern part of China? A recent research has made it clear that all the environmental conditions for establishing such a plateau have come into being from 22 million years ago and developed till now. At that time, the grand Tibet Plateau changed the atmospheric circulation leading to the desertification in inner Asian land.

Recently, in Longxi area that is located in the north of Tibet Plateau, scientists have found out a set of ancient soil sequence formulated in the mid-new century. This sequence is 253 meters thick including more than 230 layers are clearly ancient soil. Determined by times, scientists believe that they are formed between 22 million and 6.2 million years ago with only less than 1 million-year "loss". The great time of changing in global environment, paleontology and structure has contributed new possibilities for the research of global and regional environmental evolution and research. -14

Research on Aggregation of Organic Molecules and Radical Chemistry

Xikui JIANG and Guozhen JI, scientists from CAS Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry, won the first-grade prize of the National Awards for Natural Science for their outstanding achievement of the "Aggregation of Organic Molecules and Free Radical Chemistry". Over the past 20 years, a research group under the leadership of Prof. Xikui JIANG has carried out studies at two important frontiers of physical organic chemistry. Here are their achievements:

1- The aggregation of organic molecules. They have studied the aggregation, self-coiling, deaggregation of organic molecules driven by hydrophobic-lipophilic interactions in aqueous or aquiorgano solvent systems. They have proposed some important concepts in this field, e.g., deaggregation, electrostatically stabilized aggregate (ESAg), solvent aggregating power (SAgP), etc. They also hypothesized that an inherent property common to the culprit molecules of arteriosclerosis could be their relatively high coaggregating tendency. The study on deaggregation may lead to helpful ideas for drug design in the treatment of cardiovascular disease. 2- Radical chemistry. They worked out a scale of substituent parameters sJJ· to reflect the abilities of substituents to delocalize the spin. This sJJ· scale is the most self-consistent and crossed-checked s · scale, and it is applicable to the correlation analysis of all kinds of accurately measured rate and spectral data. To successfully answer a long-standing intriguing question in radical chemistry of why s + parameter alone suffices to correlate a spate of radical-chemistry data, they proposed four categories of possible circumstances in the correlation analysis of radical chemistry.-15

First Spherical Torus in China

Successfully developed by CAS Institute of Physics, the Spherical Torus, named as SUNIST (Sino-UNIted Spherical Torus), the first of its kind in China，has drawn great attention from the international academic circles of fusion research. The device is operating smoothly and ready for physical experiments.

Spherical Torus, also known as Spherical Tokamak or ST, is different to the conventional Tokamak design in terms of efficiency. The device has many significant advantages and is expected to be used in the construction of small fusion reactor.-16

Significant Improvement on Controlled Thermonuclear Fusion

More than 1 minute-long high-temperature plasma discharge was obtained on the HT-7 Superconducting Tokamak by the researchers from CAS Institute of Plasma Physics (IPP) in the 2002-2003 Winter Physical Experiment Campaign, a headway marking HT-7 to be the second Tokamak in the world producing minute-scale high- temperature plasma.

Some of the important results achieved in the experiment were released by IPP: the highest electron temperature exceeds 50 million ℃; reproducible plasma discharges are over 60 seconds while the longest reaches 63.59 seconds; the existing duration of high- temperature plasma is only shorter than that produced by the bigger-sized Tokamak device Tore-Supra in France; and the duration of improved confinement discharges is 220 times as long as that of energy confinement, which hold the safe lead in the world. Dozens of scientists from associated units of USA, Japan, Russia and China participated in the experiment. Further data processing and analysis are under way.-17

A Great Breakthrough in Developing the Fourth-Generation Catalysts

After a decade of arduous work, CAS scientists succeeded in developing Metal Nanoclusters, the fourth-generation high-performance catalysts. This work includes a new method concerning the preparation of a nano-metallic colloid protected by polymers and demystification of the secret to raise the working efficiency of metal nanoclusters used as a catalyst.

Metal Nanoclusters are called the fourth-generation catalysts because of their potentials in developing superb and outstanding properties to trigger a chemical reaction. Funded by the National Natural Sciences Foundation of China (NSFC), a research team headed by Prof. Hanfan LIU from the CAS Institute of Chemistry started its exploratory study on the catalyzing performance of polymer-stabilized bi-metallic clusters in nano-scale since the end of 1990s.

The researchers succeeded in quantity synthesis of metal nanoclusters via a combination of polymer matrix effect and freeze-drying. Its work lays down a prerequisite for the industrial application of metallic cluster catalysts. In addition, the researchers first utilized microwave dielectric heating to the synthesis and realized the first continuous synthesis of the new catalysts in the world today as a novel approach for preparing the top-quality catalysts noted for their wide application.-18

SIOFM Developed New Laser Technology

The optical program 'Double-cladding Fiber Laser' undertaken by Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, has developed the fiber laser with its maximum power about 20.6 Watts. Under the guidance of Prof. Zhijiang WANG and Prof. Qihong LOU, after more than one year's hard work, scientists have achieved the goal of laser power output around 5 to 10 Watts in advance, and also applied for 6 patents.
This kind of double-cladding fiber laser, with its compact structure and convenient usage, is quite potential to be widely used in such areas as fiber communication, laser engraving, laser marking, laser inspection and measurement, etc.-21