Chinanews, Beijing, Nov. 21 ¨C Beijing will build 60 ecological parks near the Fourth Ring Road and Fifth Ring Road. Officials said that these parks will be opened before May 2008. Beijing will also build parks in its suburbs in the next 3 years, which will occupy a total area of 100 sq. km.

Lan Bin, an official from Beijing municipal government, said that more trees and grasses should be planted in parks in the suburbs, which need to occupy 90 percent of the area. He said that such parks aimed to make people lead a healthy life.

He said that hundreds of plants should be introduced to these parks, and the parks should also provide places for wild animals, so as to attract more visitors.

Chinanews, Urmuqi, Nov. 21 ¨C Ma Ming, a scholar from Chinese Academy of Sciences, has launched a survey on snow leopard near the border of China and Mongolia. After 3 months of investigation, Ma and his scientific research group only found 30 snow leopards near the Tianshan Mountains in Xinjiang.

The snow leopard can be distinguished from other similar species by its furs. It lives in cold plateaus, which makes its fur unique. The snow leopard is also regarded as the most beautiful animal living on plateaus. It often appeared in the Tianshan Mountains in the past, but now it is difficult for people to find its traces in that region.

According to statistics, there were only 3,500-7,000 snow leopards in the world. Now such animal can be found only in Gansu, Qinghai, Tibet, Sichuan, Inner Mongolia of China and in some Central Asian countries.

Ma warned that the snow leopard is on the brink of extinction as the enviromental condition of the Tianshan Mountains deteriorate these years.

Chinanews, Beijing, Nov. 20 ¨C In the next three years, China will launch a series of key national space projects, including landing on the moon and retrieving samples from the moon’s surface, said a person at the Commission of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense (COSTIND), CCTV reported.

So far, China has successfully launched its moon probe satellite and make the satellite enter into the moon-transfer orbit. In the next stage, China will try to let the satellite make a soft landing on the moon and explore the moon surface (which will be included as the second phase of the moon project) and further retrieve some soil samples from the moon surface (which will be the third phase of China’s moon project).

In addition to the moon probe project, China will also kick off some other major space projects. These will include: launching satellites that will observe the earth with high-resolution, launching the Bei-Dou Satellite Navigation System and kicking off researches on the development of new generations of carrier rockets.

At present, there are over 20 China-made satellites working in space. During the Eleventh Five-Year Plan period (2006-2010), China aims to total the number of such satellites up to 60, said Luo Ge, director of COSTIND’s No.1 Section.

In the next three years, China will carry out more cooperations with other countries in the space field. China will work with Russia to launch the Mars exploration program and it will work with France in a series of astronomical and ocean observation programs. These cooperation projects will boost China’s competitive edge in the space field in international market.

Chinanews, Beijing, Nov. 20 ¨C According to Guangming Daily, many precious bronze vessels have been found at a historical site in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province.

Experts discovered the heritage site in 1988, which has a history of 6,000 years Experts said the site has an important scientific value in pre-history research.

Archeologists started evacuation of the site on October 10. They have found some 600 coins of the Tang Dynasty (618-907) and bronze vessels of the Shang and Zhou dynasties (C. 1600 B.C.-256 B.C.). Currently the site is still under investigation.

(Source: Xinhua/China Daily)Nov. 20 - Chang’e I, China’s first lunar orbiter, officially began exploring the moon Monday evening, the China National Space Administration (CNSA) said.

Its sensing equipment was due to become operational after the orbiter oriented its solar panel toward the sun so it can generate its own power and swung its directional antenna toward the Earth to transmit data.

The satellite is equipped with a stereo camera and interferometer, an imager and gamma/X-ray spectrometer, a laser altimeter, a microwave detector, a high-energy solar particle detector and a low-energy ion detector.

The satellite is expected to relay back its first pictures of the moon before the end of this month.

Chang’e I will not be able to relay back pictures immediately because scientists will have to take some time tweaking the equipment, Pang Zhihao, a researcher with the China Academy of Space Technology, was quoted by the Shanghai-based Oriental Morning News as saying.

By way of example, he said the aperture of the orbiter’s camera will have to be adjusted to light available in space.

Factors such as the distance between the orbiter and the lunar surface will also have to be factored into the process, he said.

Pang said the images taken by Chang’e I will be wider than those snapped by Japan’s lunar probe.

Those pictures were released on November 7.

The best of the images captured by Chang’e I will be released to the public before the end of this month, he said.

The satellite entered the 127-minute polar circular orbit about 200 km above the moon’s surface on November 7.

It had circled the moon 135 times as of 2 pm on Sunday, CNSA spokesman Pei Zhaoyu said on Sunday.

The orbiter is under direct control for at least 15 hours a day, monitored by tracking stations in Qingdao, Shandong Province, and Kashgar, the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, as well as a station operated by the European Space Agency.

Since Chang’e I entered its present orbit, it has undergone a number of tests to determine whether it is working properly.

The satellite appears to be functioning smoothly.

(Source: China Daily)Nov.19 - Beijing has tightened security at veterinary laboratories under an anti-terror program intended to ensure bio-safety during the 2008 Olympic Games.

The city’s 27 veterinary laboratories signed guarantees with the Beijing Agriculture Bureau on Saturday promising not to allow any leaks of disease-causing microorganisms during the Games, the Beijing Youth Daily reported Sunday.

The bureau has urged every lab to establish its own bio-safety management committee by this Sunday.

Monthly safety inspections of veterinary labs will begin this month to expose any loopholes in safety management.

Li Quanlu, director of the Beijing Animal Health Supervision Institute, said the campaign is also aimed at increasing public awareness of biological terrorism to fight against biological weapons and the leakage of harmful bacteria, fungi, viruses and toxins.

The city will improve supervision of the deadly microorganisms that cause animal diseases and crack down on the unauthorized preservation, use and transport of such microorganisms, Li said.

By the end of this month, the authorities will post standardized signs at veterinary labs to raise public awareness of bio-safety and bio-disaster prevention.

“Citizens are encouraged to report bio-safety violations to the authorities,” Li said.

The authorities passed a regulation in late 2004 to tighten management of biological laboratories in response to an incident earlier that year in which two people were infected with the SARS virus at a lab operated by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

The regulation graded the country’s pathogenic microbe labs into four levels.

The first and second grades are for labs forbidden to conduct experiments on risky pathogenic microbes, which can cause severe and contagious diseases in humans and animals.

The third and fourth grade labs are allowed to conduct experiments on such diseases after securing a special certificate from the health and veterinary administrations.

A national standard on laboratory bio-safety was established in 2004 by the Standardization Administration of China and the Certification and Accreditation Administration of China to specify the general requirements of laboratory bio-safety.