Innovation and Development

Media Focus on FAST

China has begun to construct the world's largest radio telescope which is known as the five-hundred-meter Aperture spherical telescope (FAST), with a total investment of about 100 million US dollars. The facility will operate at low-frequency (less than 3 GHz) radio waves with sharp resolution, allowing astronomers to detect galaxies and pulsars at unprecedented distances. To be completed in 2014, FAST will sit in a natural karst depression in a remote area of Guizhou Province in southwestern China. The ground-breaking for FAST has drawn extensive attention from international media. Magazines such as Science, Physics World, Sky and Telescope and Nature, have reported FAST in their recent issues respectively.

New Catalysis - Highlight in Titanium Dioxide Research

Aresearch team headed by Li Jingbo from the Institute of Semiconductors, CAS, collaborated with their US partners, has designed an effective measure to enhance titanium dioxide catalytic efficiency by doping the crystal with pairs of atoms. The result was published on line as a "featured highlight" in Nature on Mar. 17. Researchers designed a co-doped approach of molybdenum and carbon, hoping that carrier lifetime in their passivated co-doped system should be longer than in unpassivated systems with single dopants.

New Way to Treat Cancer - Heavy Ion Therapy

From Mar. 2 to 7, the Institute of Modern Physics, CAS, conducted clinical therapy trials for the 8th group with 21 cases of superficially-placed tumor, using carbon ion beam (100 MeV each nucleon) provided by the National Laboratory of Heavy Ion Accelerator, Lanzhou. Of the patients, the oldest is 88 years old and the youngest only 10 months. So far, a total of 103 cases of superficially-placed tumor have received heavy ion therapy by the Institute of Modern Physics. The 82 patients of previous 7 groups have a follow-up rate of more than 96%. The follow-up observation has presented that the therapy has produced a significant effect and the irradiated part and the whole body of the patients show no significant adverse reaction.