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WELLINGTON, May 13 (Xinhua) -- While it's long been known that a little sunshine can spread happiness, researchers in New Zealand have found that it can also save the lives of pneumonia patients.Medical scientists have found that vitamin D, which is absorbed through the skin and produced with exposure to sunlight, is a major factor in the survival rate of pneumonia patients.Researchers at Waikato University collaborated with doctors at Waikato Hospital, both Hamilton-based institutions, to study blood samples of 112 patients admitted to the hospital with pneumonia during the winter.They found that those with severe vitamin D deficiency 17 of the patients were more likely to die within a month, compared with patients with normal or slightly low vitamin D levels.Dr Bob Hancox, of the hospital's department of respiratory medicine, said five of the 17 died, a 29-percent mortality rate, compared with four deaths among the 95 patients with higher vitamin D levels, a 4-percent mortality rate."The analysis confirmed that the difference in mortality rates between the two groups was very unlikely to be due to chance," Hancox told Xinhua.Vitamin D deficiency was a concern around the world, Hancox said."Sunlight is the main source of vitamin D, so it tends to be a winter problem in temperate climates when people spend a lot of time indoors. But it occurs in all countries and vitamin D deficiency is believed to be a major problem worldwide."There is accumulating evidence that we need vitamin D to help fight infections, such as pneumonia as we have shown, as well as improve bone health," he told Xinhua."What is not yet clear is whether we can do anything about it. We don't know whether treating people with vitamin D supplements would help to prevent or treat respiratory infections. This is what we need to find out now."Dr Ray Cursons, of the Biological Sciences department at Waikato University, said patient age, sex, additional health conditions, and other prognostic factors did not affect the research outcome, although researchers still could not establish a causal link between vitamin D deficiency and mortality in the patients.Waikato Hospital D respiratory specialist Dr Noel Karalus said it was not yet known whether giving patients vitamin D supplements after their admission to hospital with respiratory tract infections would alter outcomes."It may transpire that vitamin D helps us avoid infection rather than cure it once established."Cursons said the best source of vitamin D was sunlight as dietary sources such as fatty fish and cod liver oil did not contain enough vitamin D."There is still some controversy regarding the optimal daily allowance of vitamin D. How much we absorb through the skin depends on sun exposure, skin type and geographical latitude. M ori and Pacific Islanders absorb less because of their darker skin, and people in colder climates also have lower levels of vitamin D. "Pneumonia is the single largest cause of death in children worldwide, killing an estimated 1.6 million children under the age of five each year, according to the World Health Organization.The research findings are published in the journal Respirology, published by the Asian Pacific Society of Respirology, this month.

BEIJING, Feb. 4 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese government Friday initiated a relief and assistance program for eight drought-ravaged provinces, said a statement on the website of Ministry of Agriculture.The government had implemented a grade II emergency response, meaning a 24-hour alert, daily damage reports, and the dispatching of experts and relief materials, said the statement.The ministry had sent teams to help with relief work in the provinces of Hebei, Shanxi, Jangsu, Anhui, Shandong, Henan, Shaanxi and Gansu, said the statement.The four-month drought had affected 35.1 percent of wheat crops, -- 96.11 million mu (6.4 million hectares) -- accounting for 21.7 percent of total farmland in the provinces, it said.The wheat growing area in the eight provinces accounted for more than 80 percent of the country's total, said the statement.The provinces have received little rainfall since October last year, it said.

LOS ANGELES, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Unrecycled energy-efficient bulbs release tons of mercury into the environment every year, raising an environmental concern, it was reported on Thursday.Demand for the energy-efficient lights -- the compact fluorescent light bulb (CFL) -- is growing as government mandates for energy-efficient lighting take effect, yet only about two percent of residential consumers and one-third of businesses recycle the new bulbs, the Los Angeles Times said, quoting the Association of Lighting and Mercury Recyclers (ALMR).Each CFL contains up to five milligrams of mercury, a potent neurotoxin that's on the worst-offending list of environmental contaminants, the report said.As a result, U.S. landfills are releasing more than four tons of mercury annually into the atmosphere and storm water runoff, the Journal of the Air and Waste Management Association said in a study published by the paper.The federal Clean Energy Act of 2007 established energy- efficiency standards for light bulbs that dimmed the future for old-fashioned incandescents, which don't meet those standards. Incandescents are to be phased out by 2014 in the U.S., and California passed even stricter rules, calling for store shelves to be cleared of them by 2013.The old-style bulbs are just too wasteful, converting to light only 10 percent of the energy they consume. The rest is squandered as heat.Sales of energy-efficient alternatives like CFLs, halogen bulbs and LEDs have been growing steadily, with the low-cost CFLs the biggest sellers, according to the paper.If every California household replaced five incandescent bulbs with CFLs, the move would save 6.18 billion kilowatt-hours and prevent the annual release of 2.26 million tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide, according to the California Energy Commission. That 's equivalent to taking 414,000 cars off the road.But no federal law mandates recycling of household fluorescent lights. Federal rules exempt some businesses, based in part on the number of bulbs used, said Paul Abernathy, executive director of the ALMR, which is based in Napa, Calif.Several states, including California, Massachusetts, Maine, Vermont and Minnesota, do require that all households and businesses recycle fluorescents, the paper said.But the ALMR said compliance is low because of a lack of convenient drop-off options.

WASHINGTON, May 2 (Xinhua) -- Rice originated in China, a team of U.S. genome researchers has concluded in a study tracing back thousands of years of evolutionary history through large-scale gene re-sequencing.Their findings, which appear Monday in the latest issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), indicate that domesticated rice may have first appeared as far back as approximately 9,000 years ago in the Yangtze Valley of China. Previous research suggested domesticated rice may have two points of origin -- India as well as China.Asian rice, Oryza sativa, is one of world's oldest crop species. It is also a very diverse crop, with tens of thousands of varieties known throughout the world. Two major subspecies of rice -- japonica and indica -- represent most of the world's varieties. Sushi rice, for example, is a type of japonica, while most of the long-grain rice in risottos are indica.Because rice is so diverse, its origins have been the subject of scientific debate. One theory -- a single-origin model -- suggests that indica and japonica were domesticated once from the wild rice O. rufipogon.Another -- a multiple-origin model -- proposes that these two major rice types were domesticated separately and in different parts of Asia. The multiple-origin model has gained currency in recent years as biologists have observed significant genetic differences between indica and japonica, and several studies examining the evolutionary relationships among rice varieties supported more than domestication in both India and China.In the PNAS study, the researchers re-assessed the evolutionary history, or phylogeny, of domesticated rice using previously published datasets, some of which have been used to argue that indica and japonica rice have separate origins. Using more modern computer algorithms, however, the researchers concluded these two species have the same origin because they have a closer genetic relationship to each other than to any wild rice species found in either India or China.In addition, the study's authors examined the phylogeny of domesticated rice by re-sequencing 630 gene fragments on selected chromosomes from a diverse set of wild and domesticated rice varieties. Using new modeling techniques, which had previously been used to look at genomic data in human evolution, their results showed that the gene sequence data was more consistent with a single origin of rice.In the study, the investigators also used a "molecular clock" of rice genes to see when rice evolved. Depending on how the researchers calibrated their clock, they pinpointed the origin of rice at possibly 8,200 years ago, while japonica and indica split apart from each other about 3,900 years ago. The study's authors pointed out that these molecular dates were consistent with archaeological studies.Archaeologists have uncovered evidence in the last decade for rice domestication in the Yangtze Valley beginning approximately 8, 000 to 9,000 years ago while domestication of rice in the India's Ganges region was around about 4,000 years ago."As rice was brought in from China to India by traders and migrant farmers, it likely hybridized extensively with local wild rice," explained New York University biologist Michael Purugganan, one of the study's co-authors. "So domesticated rice that we may have once thought originated in India actually has its beginnings in China."

SHANGHAI, May, 13 (Xinhua) -- Scientists attending a recent high-level conference on robotics agreed that great progress has been made in the field, but strict rules for the safe usage of robots should be implemented."Four years ago, if you went into a Chinese factory and said 'robots can help you work,' you would be kicked out. But now, China has a large industrial robot market, along with Japan, the Republic of Korea and the United States," says Li Zexiang, general chair of the 2011 International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2011), which concluded Friday in Shanghai.Chinese robotics researchers have suggested to the government that rules and regulations for robot usage should be created. Professor Wang Tianmiao from the Beihang University (BUAA) told Xinhua about the suggestions during the conference.Wang says that in the future, it might not be possible for artificial intelligence to take the place of humans in some social roles. However, Wang says that mankind should pay close attention to the possible dangers of advancements in robotics, as the industry is currently undergoing dramatic changes.The five-day conference, which is organized by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), took place in China for the first time ever since its first session in 1984, which took place in the city of Atlanta in the United States.Media reports show that Japan, the Republic of Korea (ROK) and several Western countries have already drafted rules about the safe use of robots.