Headline News

Hu Jintao Congratulates USTC on Its 50th Anniversary

On Sep. 25, President Hu Jintao sent a congratulatory letter to the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) for the 50th anniversary of its founding, expressing his congratulations to all USTC staff and alumni both at home and abroad. The letter was taken to USTC by Liu Yandong, Member of the Political Bureau of CCCPC and State Councilor on Sep. 27 morning who paid a special visit to USTC on the occasion. Bai Chunli, Executive Vice-president of CAS, read the letter at a conference for USTC students and teachers held in the morning. President Hu pinpointed that it is the core of national development strategy and key to improvement of national comprehensive power to enhance the capability of home-grown innovation and build an innovative country. To that end, we must spend no effort to foster world first class scientists and scientific leaders and focus on education of innovative talents at the frontiers. President Hu hoped that USTC could develop into a world level research –oriented university.

Lu Yongxiang Congratulates on Success of Satellite BX-1 Circling Shenzhou-7 Spaceship

On Oct. 5, the Space Application System of China's Manned Space Project announced that satellite BX-1 circling the Shenzhou-7 spaceship successfully fulfilled its early stage space observation tasks. It has already sent back over 1,000 clear and complete images of the spaceship from different angles. It also successfully completed the experiment of being released and orbiting the orbital capsule of the Shenzhou-7. The cameras with wide field of view mounted on the small satellite capture the static images of the spaceship every three seconds and then condense and store such images. When the small satellite was circling apart from the spaceship, according to the pre-set work flow, cameras with narrow field of view started to capture the images of the spaceship orbiting the orbital capsule. When it turned to Earth oriented from spaceship oriented, it sent the images stored to the earth from the above the monitoring station. Lu Yongxiang, President of CAS, sent a letter to Shanghai Engineering Center for Microsatellites, Center for Space Science and Application, expressing his warm congratulations and sincere regards to all involved in this flight experiment and research work.

Breakthrough Achieved on Gene Associated with Schizophrenia

A research team headed by He Lin of the Institute for Nutritional Sciences, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, CAS, discovered for the first time the strong association of ZNF804A gene with schizophrenia in cooperation with scientists of the Cardiff University, University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, the Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Stanford University. Their paper entitled “1－dentification of loci associated with schizophrenia by genome－wide association and follow-up” was published on Nature Genetics recently, which received warm response from the international academic community. He Lin’s team, in cooperation with the above said institutions, used the latest genome-wide association technique to analyze 479 cases and 2,937 controls. Moreover, based on repeated verification and analysis of up to 16,726 additional subjects, they discovered for the first time the strong association of ZNF804A gene with schizophrenia. Some authoritative experts think that this discovery will inaugurate the time for genome-wide association analysis used in the study of mental disease heredity.