河北动物细胞超微立体结构模型(三门峡喉结构与功能放大模型) (今日更新中)

CANBERRA, Aug. 31 (Xinhua) -- Australia's new chief medical officer, Professor Chris Baggoley, on Wednesday said Australian should not be worried about reports that a mutant strain of the deadly bird flu virus is spreading across Asia and beyond.On Monday, the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said a mutant strain of the deadly avian influenza virus was spreading in Asia and issued a warning that the bird flu could spread from poultry to humans. It urged "heightened readiness and surveillance" as the mutant strain posed "unpredictable risks to human health."But Professor Baggoley, who took office on Tuesday, said Australia is well served by strict testing and customs regimes, adding that avian migration patterns also mean infected birds are highly unlikely to arrive in Australia."I don't think we should be worried," Prof Baggoley told Sky News."The country and the Australian government is certainly vigilant in relation to bird flu."Prof. Baggoley insisted the H5N1 virus remains overwhelmingly a disease of birds and it is very uncommon for humans to catch it. It is also exceedingly rare for humans to spread it among themselves.He said that even if bird flu did arrive and affected humans, Australia is ready to respond to any new and significant developments in bird flu."Australia tests migratory wild birds, looking for H5N1, and has been doing this for some years and has never found it," he said."On the human side of things, Australia has been preparing for a possible outbreak of H5N1 since 2004."We've got the laboratory capacity to diagnose influenza; we've got arrangements in place for a rapid production of an H5N1 vaccine for humans, and we've got ready access to antivirals."There have been no outbreaks of bird flu in Australia to date.The UN said the latest human death from bird flu occurred earlier this month in Cambodia, which has registered eight cases of human infection this year, all of them fatal.H5N1 has infected 565 people since it first appeared in 2003, killing 331.

WASHINGTON, Aug. 18 (Xinhua) -- Using integrated radar observations from a consortium of international satellites, NASA-funded researchers have created the first complete map of the speed and direction of ice flow in Antarctica, the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announced Thursday.The map, which shows glaciers flowing thousands of miles from the continent's deep interior to its coast, will be critical for tracking future sea-level increases from climate change."This is like seeing a map of all the oceans' currents for the first time. It's a game changer for glaciology," said Eric Rignot of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the University of California (UC), Irvine. Rignot is lead author of a paper about the ice flow published online Thursday in Science Express. "We are seeing amazing flows from the heart of the continent that had never been described before."Rignot and UC Irvine scientists used billions of data points captured by European, Japanese and Canadian satellites to weed out cloud cover, solar glare and land features masking the glaciers. With the aid of NASA technology, the team painstakingly pieced together the shape and velocity of glacial formations, including the previously uncharted East Antarctica, which comprises 77 percent of the continent.Like viewing a completed jigsaw puzzle, the scientists were surprised when they stood back and took in the full picture. They discovered a new ridge splitting the 5.4-million-square-mile landmass from east to west.The team also found unnamed formations moving up to 800 feet annually across immense plains sloping toward the Antarctic Ocean and in a different manner than past models of ice migration."The map points out something fundamentally new: that ice moves by slipping along the ground it rests on," said Thomas Wagner, NASA's cryospheric program scientist in Washington. "That's critical knowledge for predicting future sea level rise. It means that if we lose ice at the coasts from the warming ocean, we open the tap to massive amounts of ice in the interior."

BEIJING, Sept. 25 (Xinhua) -- As China's economy has soared to the second place in the world, the country's scientific strength has also surged -- if only measured by the numbers.Chinese researchers published more than 1.2 million papers from 2006 to 2010 -- second only to the United States but well ahead of Britain, Germany and Japan, according to data recently published by Elsevier, a leading international scientific publisher and data provider. This figure represents a 14 percent increase over the period from 2005 to 2009.The number of published academic papers in science and technology is often seen as a gauge of national scientific prowess.But these impressive numbers mask an uncomfortable fact: most of these papers are of low quality or have little impact. Citation per article (CPA) measures the quality and impact of papers. China's CPA is 1.47, the lowest figure among the top 20 publishing countries, according to Elsevier's Scopus citation database.China's CPA dropped from 1.72 for the period from 2005 to 2009, and is now below emerging countries such as India and Brazil. Among papers lead-authored by Chinese researchers, most citations were by domestic peers and, in many cases, were self-citations."While quantity is an important indicator because it gives a sense of scientific capacity and the overall level of scientific activity in any particular field, citations are the primary indicator of overall scientific impact," said Daniel Calto, Director of SciVal Solutions at Elsevier North America.Calto attributed China's low CPA to a "dilution effect.""When the rise in the number of publications is so rapid, as it has been in China -- increasing quantity does not necessarily imply an overall increase in quality," said Calto.He noted the same pattern in a variety of rapidly emerging research countries such as India, Brazil, and earlier in places like the Republic of Korea."Chinese researchers are too obsessed with SCI (Science Citation Index), churning out too many articles of low quality," said Mu Rongping, Director-General of the Institute of Policy and Management at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, China's major think tank.SCI is one of the databases used by Chinese researchers to look-up their citation performance. The alternative, Scopus, provides a wider coverage worldwide."Chinese researchers from a wide range of areas and institutions are vying for publication, as it is a key criterion for academic appraisal in China, if not the only one. As a result, the growth of quality pales in comparison to that of quantity," said Mu, an expert on China's national science policy and competitiveness.On the other hand, China also falls behind the United States in multidisciplinary research, which is a core engine for scientific advance and research excellence.From 2006 to 2010, China published 1,229,706 papers while the United States churned out 2,082,733. According to a new metric introduced by Elsevier's Spotlight research assessment solution, China generated 885 competencies while the United States had 1,817.In other words, China's total research output is more than half that of the United States, while the number of competencies showing China's strength in multidisciplinary research is less than half that of the United States.Cong Cao, an expert on China's science and technology, put it more bluntly in an article he wrote: "When the paper bubble bursts, which will happen sooner or later, one may find that the real situation of scientific research in China probably is not that rosy."China has been investing heavily in scientific research and technological development in recent years to strengthen its innovative capacity, The proportion of GDP spent on R&D grew from 0.9 percent in 2000 to 1.4 percent in 2007, according to the World Bank.An IMF forecast in 2010 says China now ranks second globally in R&D spending. The IMF calculates China's R&D expenditure at 150 billion U.S. dollars when based on Purchasing Power Parity, a widely used economic concept that attempts to equalize differences in standard of living among countries.By this measure, China surpassed Japan in R&D spending in 2010.Many see China's huge investment in R&D as the momentum behind the country's explosive increase in research papers."Getting published is, in some ways, an improvement over being unable to get published," Mu said. "But the problem is, if the papers continue to be of low quality for a long time, it will be a waste of resources."In China, academic papers play a central role in the academic appraisal system, which is closely related to degrees and job promotions.While acknowledging the importance of academic papers in research, Mu believes a more balanced appraisal system should be adopted. "This is a problem with science management. If we put too much focus on the quantity of research papers, we leave the job of appraisal to journal editors."In China, the avid pursuit of publishing sometimes gives rise to scientific fraud. In the most high-profile case in recent years, two lecturers from central China's Jinggangshan University were sacked in 2010 after a journal that published their work admitted 70 papers they wrote over two years had been falsified."This is one of the worst cases. These unethical people not only deceived people to further their academic reputations, they also led academic research on the wrong path, which is a waste of resources," Mu said.A study done by researchers at Wuhan University in 2010 says more than 100 million U.S. dollars changes hands in China every year for ghost-written academic papers. The market in buying and selling scientific papers has grown five-fold in the past three years.The study says Chinese academics and students often buy and sell scientific papers to swell publication lists and many of the purported authors never write the papers they sign. Some master's or doctoral students are making a living by churning out papers for others. Others mass-produce scientific papers in order to get monetary rewards from their institutions.A 2009 survey by the China Association for Science and Technology (CAST) of 30,078 people doing science-related work shows that nearly one-third of respondents attributed fraud to the current system that evaluates researchers' academic performance largely on the basis of how many papers they write and publish.Despite rampant fraud, China will continue to inject huge money into science. According to the latest national science guideline, which was issued in 2006 by the State Council, the investment in R&D will account for 2.5 percent of GDP in 2020."If China achieves its stated goal of investing 2.5 percent of its GDP in R&D in 2020, and sustains its very fast economic growth over the next decade, it would quite likely pass the U.S. in terms of total R&D investment sometime in the late 2010s," said Calto, adding that it is also quite likely that at some point China will churn out more papers than the United States.According to Calto, China does mostly applied research, which helps drive manufacturing and economic growth, while basic research only accounts for 6 percent, compared with about 35 percent in Germany, Britain, and the United States, and 16 percent in Japan."In the long term, in order to really achieve dominance in any scientific area, I think it will be necessary to put significant financial resources into fundamental basic research -- these are the theoretical areas that can drive the highest level of innovation," Calto said.

UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 19 (Xinhua) -- Mohammad Hossein Niknam, acting minister of health in international affairs of Iran, said here on Monday that his country is working to prevent and counteract the non-communicable diseases (NCDs), which have had significant effect on the population."NCDs have traditionally been more prevalent in affluent societies," he said. "However, they are increasingly becoming common in many developing countries, and in particular among the less affluent groups. The Eastern Mediterranean Region (EMRO) as others is suffering a heavy burden of NCD diseases and Iran is no exception: the total burden of disease for NCDs is 45 percent for males and 33 percent for females."Niknam's statements came as he addressed the UN General Assembly High-Level Meeting on Prevention and Control of Non- communicable Diseases."This timely high-level event provides us with an ideal platform to share views, information, ideas and experiences, to come up with remedial proposals and to forge effective collaborative partnerships in the implementation of realistic but effective health development programs in common areas of concern pertaining to the non-communicable diseases," Niknam said.He explained that Iran is implementing a series of programs in order to reduce the frequency and impacts of NCDs."As part of these programs I would like to mention prevention and control of common NCDs risk factors, imposition of taxes to curtail unhealthy habits such as tobacco consumption, execution of mass public information and educational campaigns, fostering food industry regulations, screening of blood pressure levels and high glucosemia," he said.Iran has created a Non-Communicable Diseases Risk Factor Surveillance System, according to Niknam. This system, in place since 2004, has conducted six large-scale surveys to gather information helpful to public health."Further, comprehensive cumulative national data has been compiled based on age, sex and location to facilitate effective monitoring and implementation of policies geared towards control and prevention of NCDs," Niknam said.Iran is conducting many other integrated NCD control and prevention programs, such as, to name a few, a Cardiovascular Diseases Control Program for rural areas; a National Cancer Control Program focusing on breast and colorectal cancers; and a Diabetes Control and Prevention Program that targets both rural and urban areas.Niknam ended his statement by noting that Iran has held regional consultations on the NCD issue."I would like to conclude my remarks by mentioning that as a sign of its commitment to promote regional and international cooperation, the Islamic Republic of Iran hosted on 25-26 October 2010 in Tehran the first regional meeting of a series of the regional consultations held by WHO (World Health Organization) on the prevention and control of NCDs," he said. "In our understanding, only through closer and meaningful collaboration at all levels, especially in areas such as legislation, resource mobilization and information and knowledge sharing, we may success in our endeavor to prevent and combat NCDs."

LOS ANGELES, May 30 (Xinhua) -- The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) warned on Monday that children should keep away from energy drinks which may be dangerous for minors.The AAP urged young children and teens to avoid energy drinks entirely, saying routine consumption of sports drinks should be limited or eliminated.Energy drinks include such popular brands as Red Bull, AMP and Rockstar, the AAP said in a report.These drinks, the report said, tend to be heavily caffeinated, potentially having several times the level of caffeine found in a cup of coffee.In addition, manufacturers often add sugar and herbal stimulants such as guarana and taurine to the drinks, which are popular among kids, according to the report."There's no place for energy drinks for kids," said report co-author Dr. Marcie Beth Schneider, an adolescent physician in Greenwich, Connecticut. "There's a place for sports drinks, but that place is very specific."The caffeine in energy drinks can lead to high blood pressure, high heart rate and insomnia, she said.The other ingredients can boost the power of the caffeine, she said, adding that the drinks will have a greater effect on children because they're smaller than adults."Kids don't need to have this," she said. "This is not something they should be drinking."Schneider declined to identify any energy drinks that may be better than others for kids who insist on drinking them. If kids use energy drinks because they're tired, she said, they should get more rest instead of chugging caffeine.Half of the nation's 5,448 reported caffeine overdoses in 2007 were in people under age 19, although it's not known how many of the cases were the result of energy drink consumption, according to statistics provided by the AAP.

来源：资阳报