On 29 October, the Shanghai Centre for Human Genome Research announced that Chinese scientists had finished the precise sequencing of the whole genomes of three important human and plant pathogens, i.e., Leptospira, Staphylococcus epidermidis and Xanthomonas campestris. 

Microbial Genome Programme (MGP) is another great project in the field of life sciences succeeding the Human Genome Programme (HGP). It is closely related to human life. For examples, the infection of Staphylococcus epidermidis ranks top among the four infectious diseases found in hospitals; Leptospirosis is one of the main epidemic infections when pestilence comes after calamity and Xanthomonas campestris can lead to worldwide black rot of all crucifers and cause drop in production.

In addition to the whole-genome sequencing of the above three pathogenic microbes, Chinese scientists also identified a whole set of genes for maintaining their vital activity, discovered a series of functional genes associated with pathogenicity and assessed a number of prospective target genes for developing a new generation of bacterins. Research on functional genes regarding the three pathogens has reportedly been carried out on a large scale.

The National Observatory has decided to name five planetoids discovered in recent years after the names of five Chinese scientists: Ganchang WANG, Fangyun CHEN, Jiachi YANG, Wenjun WU and Yisheng MAO. A naming ceremony will be held in a few days’ time.

According to the Observatory, the five planets were discovered successively in recent years within the solar system by the institution. In view of the eminent contributions of the five scientists in their respective domains, the Observatory submitted a proposal to the IAU Nomination Committee for Small Celestial Bodies that the planets be named after the scientists, which was recently approved. The naming of planetoids after our scientists is a special honor to China. Only a few Chinese scientists like Tsenning YANG, C. Samuel LEE and Jingrun CHEN have had the honor before.

According to Dengyi GAO, a researcher at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, CAS, the Polar Regions are perfect places for studying the altitude atmospheric physical process, and enhancing investigation on the regions is of significant importance to China’s aviation industry and stellar exploration.

The North Pole Scientific Expedition, organized by the China Association for Scientific Expeditions and headed by Prof. GAO, landed on Tromso，a city in the North of Norway on 17 October 2001. The expedition planned to fly to Svalbard(Norway) on 19 October to establish China’s first North Pole station for scientific exploration there, and then begin their three-year multi-disciplinary integrated survey on the North Polar Region. It will be China’s longest scientific march into the North Pole.

GAO is the first Chinese scholar who has conducted surveys on all the “three poles” of the earth (the South Pole, the North Pole and the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau). He introduced that the subject of high altitude atmospheric physics is the geophysical phenomena and physical processes that take place in the area between 30km high above the earth surface and the interplanetary space. It is thus a frontier discipline between astrophysics and geophysics, to study the altitude atmospheric structure, ionosphere and Earth-Sun space physics. 

He said that the North Pole is a crucial and sensitive area having impacts on the global climate, in particular on China’s climate and environmental changes. Chinese scientists wish to strengthen collaborative research in multiple areas with the Norwegian Institute of Polar Environment (NIPE).

Dengyi GAO said, NIPE is advanced in the glaciological and biological study of the North Pole. In addition to academic exchange, Chinese scientists plan to carry out collaborative projects on polar climate and environment with NIPE. Cooperative agreements between the two sides will be signed within the next two years.

On 13 October, the Institute of Computing Technology (ICT), CAS, on the occasion of celebrating its 45th anniversary, announced the birth of China’s first general-purpose CPU—GODSON Chip. Experts say that GODSON Chip is of great importance to the independent development of IT industry and national security in China because it is a patented intellectual property right, although its performances are no better than Intel Pentium 

According to Guojie LI, Director of the Institute of Computing Technology, CAS, GODSON Chip consists of more than 6 million transistors and adopts the majority of advanced technologies of contemporary CPU manufacturing. It can execute over 250 orders and run mainstream operating systems like Linux and many compatible applications. It can resist the attack of a broad heading of buffer overflow. ICT plans to reach the advanced world level in designing high-performance general CPUs by 2005.

On 12 October, Tianbang Membrane Technology Corporation was officially recognized as a national engineering research center for membrane technology.

As early as in 1993, the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP), CAS established the Dalian Engineering Research Center for Membrane Technology by combining three laboratories of the Institute dedicated to the R & D of membrane technology in order to facilitate the transfer of the technology. To date, the center has developed a series of membrane products whose technological level is leading the domestic market. More than 10 scientific achievements of the Center in gas and liquid separation have been awarded national and/or CAS prizes, and 33 inventions granted patents in China. Its leading product, Hydro-nitrogen Membrane Separator Device, has been applied to over 120 enterprises at home and abroad. Among others, its membrane products and technologies are also extensively employed in the fields of oil, chemical engineering, electronics, building materials, metallurgy, medicine and environmental protection.

Based on the Dalian Engineering Research Center for Membrane Technology, the DICP, in cooperation with the Dalian Tielong Industrial Company Ltd., founded “Tianbang Membrane Technology National Engineering Research Center Corp. Ltd.”, which was registered with the National Business Administration in 2000. As a result of the increase in registered capital and the introduction of new management mechanism, the strength of the Center has been greatly enhanced. Evident increase in business performance has been made last year.

The New Building of the CAS Library, so far China’s largest science library, was completed on 28 September 2001 in Zhongguancun, Beijing.

The Project is an important part of the Supporting System & Infrastructure for the CAS Knowledge Innovation Programme, as well as a key item of the reconstruction plan of the Zhongguancun Science Park. The construction was approved in 1998 and started in September 1999, with a foundation area of 18,000m² and a total construction area of over 40,000m². 

The Library is reportedly to accommodate 3.2 million books, including 1 million non-print documents. It comprises well-equipped lecture halls, large-scale exhibit halls, academician halls, multifunctional halls and an education & training center.  The affiliated Archive is specially designed to collect 550,000 volumes of archives. 

In order to improve the management level and service efficiency of the Library and the Archive, the New Building adopts many advanced technologies and systems that are made intelligent, including automatic control, security monitoring, overall wire laying, electronic conference and so on. The systems create an efficient, safe, comfortable and convenient environment for readers.

The Aurora Compiler is an R & D project conducted by the Group of Compilation, Institute of Computing Technology (ICT), CAS in collaboration with the MRL, Intel, aiming at customizing advanced optimized compilers for the new generation of Intel's bit processors. It seeks to provide an advanced platform and high-quality performance for the frontiers of international scientific research.

The Shenzhen NanoPort Company, in collaboration with the Chengdu Organic Chemistry Company, CAS, has formed a 5-to-7-ton annual mass production of carbon-nanotubes of various sizes, becoming the largest productive base of carbon nanotube in Asia. Both the volume and technology of production are leading the world.

The company is a joint venture of the Chengdu Organic Chemistry Company, CAS and the Shenzhen Huiheng Investment Development Corporation founded in April 2001 in the National High-tech Industrial Park, Shenzhen. After half-a-year preparation, the company has installed all the equipment and entered the stage of test run.

Carbon nanotube is unique in performance: it is 100 times stronger than steel but only one-sixth of its weight density. It has the properties of hydrogen storage, adsorption and catalysis, and it is super in field-electronic emission and high-frequency wideband electromagnetic wave absorption. It finds a wide range of applications in IT, life sciences, environmental sciences, aviation and space technology, chemical engineering and energy technology.

The first domestic iris identification system has been developed by the Institute of Automation (IOA) , CAS, and final preparations are being made for its entry to market. 

Biological identification is a technology for identity of recognition by computers based on the physiological or behavioral characters of a human body. Presently, iris, fingerprint, features, voice, gait and handwriting are all important bio-characters for identification.

According to Dr. Li MA, person-in-charge of the Iris Identification Project, IOA/CAS, when identified, all you have to do is to look at a tailor-made pick-up head, and your iris information will be stored in the computer of the Iris Identification System. Next time when you are required to show your identification, you have just to take a look at the pick-up head once again.

A fully automatic and fully enclosed production line for wrapt urea in humic acid (UHA), a long-acting slow-released nitrogenous fertilizer, with an annual output of 25,000 tons, has recently been established and put into operation by the Shanxi Institute of Coal Chemistry, CAS and Tongzhou (Jiangsu Province) Professional Fertilizer Company, marking a major headway in the research, development and demonstration production of urea long-acting technology in China.

Haizhou MA, professor at the Qinghai Institute of Salt Lakes, CAS, discovered that human activities produce no significant effects on the drawdown of the Qinghai Lake; it is perennial drought and warm that have caused the drop in the water level.

On 9 July 2001, a Chinese delegation comprising the National Space Administration (NSA) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences signed a cooperative agreement on the Twin-Satellite Exploration Programme of China’s Geo-Space Environment with the European Space Agency (ESA). According to the agreement, the two satellites of the Programme, after they are launched in 2003, will join the four geomagnetosphere detecting satellites of the Cluster Plan launched by ESA in 2000 to form a 6-point solid detector system of the geomagnetospheric space for the first time in human history.

In 1983, ESA initiated a Cluster Plan consisting of four identical satellites. In 1997, a group of scientists headed by Academician Zhenxing LIU from the Center for Space Sciences and Applied Research (CSSAR), CAS, put forward the proposal of implementing large-scale synchronous detection of the magnetospheric space by using two satellites whose orbits intersect each other, namely, the Twin-Satellite Programme. The proposal immediately attracted the attention of participant scientists of the Cluster Plan, who clearly expressed their wishes to take part in China's Twin-Satellite Programme. After several negotiations, it was finally agreed that ESA would provide 10 scientific detectors, including 6 detectors to be carried on the equatorial satellite and 4 on the polar satellite. The participation of ESA has enabled the shared processing of the observation data obtained by the Twin-Satellite Programme and that by the Cluster Plan.

The platform for the two satellites of the Twin-Satellite Programme will be developed by the Institute of Space Technology of China.

The Group of Geometric Analysis, AMSS has maintained fruitful cooperation with scientists from the Leipzig Institute of Mathematics, MPG in areas of common interest since 1996. In order to strengthen the cooperative relationship, AMSS formally proposed the establishment of a partner group on mathematics between the two parties in August 2000, which was approved by the German side. Before that, some exchange & cooperation projects had been conducted.

When the calf was born, it happened that China had just won the bid for the 2008 Olympic Games. The French scientists decided to name the calf Olympics-2008. According to scientists, before Olympics-2008 was born, all somatic cell-cloned calves were produced by using resting or trophophase cells. (Its cell cycle was asynchronous with that of the ovum.) It has been known that, the synchronization of cell cycles can raise the efficiency of cloning, and it is an important means for researching into the relationship between nucleus and cytoplasm. To solve the problem, Chinese and French scientists conducted in-depth study on cell cycles, and, by combining the “trauma resection” technique invented by Dr. Qi ZHOU, developed the first metaphase somatic cell-cloned calf. Researchers say that the technology will greatly improve the efficiency of animal cloning, which is very important to promoting the research on cloning technology.

The Sino-Japanese Joint Integrated Field Pre-survey of the Changes in Man-and-Nature Relations of the Heihe River Basin has recently been finished. 

The expedition made a multi-disciplinary integrated survey on the "July 1" Glacier, the Jiuquan Farm Oasis in Zhangye, the natural ecosystem in Ejina Banner, the relics of Heichengzi and many other historic sites. After the preliminary integrated survey, the two sides reached common understanding on the study of ice cores, the relations between climate and glaciers, regional water cycle and hydrochemical movement, the interactions between the ecosystem and hydrological process, water for social-economic development, natural isotopes of water, and so on, and initialed an agreement on academic exchange and collaborative research.

The following major actions of reform taken by the Institute of Modern Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences have pushed the young talented people of the Institute to the forefront of innovation with heavy burdens:

1. Establishing project groups that are put under the direct management of the Institute as a substitute for former research laboratories, thus putting an end to the history of research projects under the dual administration of both the Institute and corresponding laboratories in the past decades. The advantage of cutting out the intermediate link of laboratories is to bring closer the relationship between the institute and groups and thus improve the efficiency of management.

2. Readjusting the laboratories of the Accelerator System to the needs of the ongoing mega-science projects and the operation of mega-science devices.

In order to improve S&T researchers’ writing capacities in English and publishing skills in international journals, the University of Adelaide and Nanjing Branch of CAS held a joint workshop “Improving Publishing Skills in Agricultural Science” in Nanjing 15 -19 Oct. 2001.