Newsletter

No.58

June, 2008

Headline News	Innovation and Development	Applied Technology	Basic Science	Cooperation between CAS and Local Authorities
Bioscience	International Cooperation	Brief News	Geoscience	Spotlights of Exchanges

Headline News

Lu Yongxiang Inspects Quake-hit Area & CAS Units

On June 3 and 4, Lu Yongxiang, Vice Chairman of the Standing Committee of the People’s Congress and President of CAS, and his entourage inspected the conditions after the May 12 earthquake in CAS Chengdu Branch. He expressed sympathy and solicitude for scientific and technical personnel, cadres, employees, postgraduates and relatives of those died in the earthquake and gave instructions on post-quake restoration and disaster relief by science and technology.

Lu Yongxiang pointed out that with more efforts extended into the quake relief, the focus should be timely transferred to quake relief by science and technology in post-quake reconstruction, and in the meantime, scientific basis should be formed for the local governments to make decisions. During the inspection tour in Chengdu, Lu Yongxiang and his entourage also went to the West China Subalpine Botanic Garden, Institute of Botany, CAS in the badly damaged city of Dujiangyan, and paid visits to the teachers and students in the primary school of the striking area and the locals sufferings from the earthquake on behalf of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress.

Lu Yongxiang Meets European Commissioner Janez Potocnik

On April 24, Lu Yongxiang, President of CAS, met with Janez Potocnik, European Commissioner Responsible for Science and Research, and his entourage. Mr. Janez Potocnik expressed appreciation for the important role of CAS in the scientific cooperation between China and Europe, particularly in the European Framework Program on Scientific and Technological Research and Development where it had energetically participated. He hopes that the scientific and technological circles between EU and China could maintain the long-term strategic partnership.

Science and Physics Today
Reports on Progress of Superconductivity in China

On April 25, Science issued a commentary entitled New Superconductors Propel Chinese Physicists to Forefront in the Column of Condensed Matter Physics, commenting the important contributions made by the Chinese physicists in the study of new iron-based superconductors. On May 2, Physics Today, an important core publication in the circle of physics, made specific follow-up on the study of iron-based superconductors in this round in its quality column Research & Discovery.

It is reported that on Feb. 23, Professor Hideo Hosono of the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan and his colleagues pointed out in the Journal of the American Chemical Society that lanthanum oxygen fluorine iron arsenide (LaO1-xFxFeAs) became a superconductor at 26 kelvin, which drew the attention of an expert named Chen Genfu. In October last year, he just joined the scientific research team headed by Wang Nanlin, research fellow of the Institute of Physics, CAS. They concentrated their efforts on the LaOFeAs, and quickly transferred to the preparation of doped samples. In less than one week, they replicated the achievements of Prof. Hideo Hosono. In less than one month, they substituted cerium for lanthanum and made the compound become a superconductor at 41k. Later, at least four different scientist groups in China synthesized new superconducting compounds and posted the results on the arXiv.org preprint server (www.arxiv.org). On Mar. 29, they presented that the critical temperature for the compound between neodymium and praseodymium in the LaOFeAs family - praseodymium oxygen fluorine iron arsenide (PrO1-xFxFeAs) to become a superconductor is 52k, which was obtained by another team of the Institute of Physics, CAS led by Zhao Zhongxian, member of CAS. Up to early April, this team showed that the samarium compound became a superconductor at 55k in case it was grown under pressure, which is the highest critical temperature of iron-based superconductors in the world at present.

Wang Yupeng, Director General of the Institute of Physics, CAS, made a brief comment on institute as bottom line for their work, “there are 50 research teams and 288 research fellows in the Institute of Physics currently, and its annual financial budget is USD 2,500 million (note: including the funds for over 60% from all the competitive projects). However, in comparison with those in western countries, our input in basic research is still in an inferior level. ”