Asia/Pacific Archives

13 March 2000 | ScienceNOW

Guinea Worm Banished From India

by Pallava Bagla

India has finally conquered Guinea worm, making it the second disease after smallpox to be fully eradicated from the country. The disease, which affects mainly the rural poor, is now...

7 February 2000 | ScienceNOW

DNA Test to Thwart Tiger Trade?

by Pallava Bagla

British researchers say they are developing a DNA test that could help nab those who illegally trade in tiger products. And three recent raids in India that confiscated huge caches...

1 December 1999 | ScienceNOW

First Human Chromosome Finished

by Elizabeth Pennisi

22 down, 22 to go: Scientists announced today that they have finished sequencing nearly an entire human chromosome. Although chromosome 22 is the second smallest, the accomplishment helps set a...

10 November 1999 | ScienceNOW

Cyclone Wrecks Indian Research Centers

by Pallava Bagla

NEW DELHI--The powerful cyclone that swept across parts of eastern India late last month severely damaged at least two major Indian laboratories. The storm, which packed winds of up to...

29 September 1999 | ScienceNOW

India Creates Novel Brain Research Center

by Pallava Bagla

NEW DELHI--India is hoping to break into the front ranks of neuroscience with a new National Brain Research Center (NBRC) that opens here this week. The venture hopes to capitalize...

28 September 1999 | ScienceNOW

U.S. Adds $12 Million to Rice Sequencing Project

by Dennis Normile

PHUKET, THAILAND--Three U.S. agencies will award grants totaling $12.3 million to help speed an international effort to sequence the rice genome. The new support, to be announced next month but...

14 September 1999 | ScienceNOW

New Center Gives Japan an Arctic Toehold

by Bernice Wuethrich

FAIRBANKS, ALASKA--Japan and the United States have launched a $32 million research center to plumb the consequences of climate change in the Far North. The International Arctic Research Center (IARC),...

10 August 1999 | ScienceNOW

50 Monkeys Taken From Indian Lab

by Pallava Bagla

NEW DELHI--Armed with a government order and escorted by police, animal activists yesterday seized and released into the wild 50 rhesus monkeys being used for testing a new drug. The...

6 August 1999 | ScienceNOW

Drug-Resistant TB Gains Foothold in Russia

by Eliot Marshall

Tuberculosis (TB) is spreading at an alarming rate in Russia, according to an international health team that has analyzed the epidemic at one TB clinic. Their findings--published today in the...

5 August 1999 | ScienceNOW

Japan Plans Boost for Hand-Picked Projects

by Dennis Normile

The Japanese government is preparing to give science a hefty 9% raise in next year's budget. But researchers aren't quite ready to celebrate: Much of the increase appears slated for...

16 July 1999 | ScienceNOW

Mission to Mir Under Way

by Andrey Allakhverdov and Elena Savelieva

A cargo ship bound for the Russian space station Mir blasted off from Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 16.37 Greenwich Mean Time today. The launch, which came only after emergency...

21 May 1999 | ScienceNOW

New Dates for the Dawn of Dream Time

by Carl Zimmer

Researchers say a skeleton unearthed decades ago in the sand dunes of Lake Mungo, Australia, may be tens of thousands of years older than once assumed. The findings, which appear...

26 April 1999 | ScienceNOW

Mixed Grades for Japan's 5-Year Science Plan

by Dennis Normile

TOKYO--A 1995 law that led to Japan's first ever 5-year plan for science and technology has helped boost spending and the number of scientists being trained, but it has been...

13 April 1999 | ScienceNOW

New Virus Fingered in Malaysian Epidemic

by Martin Enserink

Scientists have identified a virus that has killed at least 95 people in Malaysia in the last 6 months, most of them pig farm workers. The culprit was officially named...

1 March 1999 | ScienceNOW

India Raises Budget to Battle Sanctions

by Pallava Bagla

NEW DELHI--Indian researchers are feeling buoyed by a new budget unveiled on 27 February that hands science its largest increase of the decade. The 20% hike is seen as a...

13 January 1999 | ScienceNOW

DOE Blocks Physicists From Indian Meeting

by James Glanz

CHICAGO--The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has refused to allow physicists at its national laboratories to travel to a major particle physics conference in India this week, in apparent retaliation...

16 December 1998 | ScienceNOW

China Boosts Basic Research

by Xiong Lei

BEIJING--China has chosen 15 projects to inaugurate one of the largest basic research programs in the country's history. The program, which will receive $300 million and run through 2003, has...

15 December 1998 | ScienceNOW

South Korea Attacks Academic Inbreeding

by Michael Baker

South Korea wants to imbue its universities with a little fresh blood. The National Assembly is expected to pass a bill this session that would prohibit universities from filling more...

9 December 1998 | ScienceNOW

India Backs Off on Animal Regulations

by Pallava Bagla

NEW DELHI--Indian scientists are hailing a government decision to scale back a proposal for a centrally run system to regulate research involving animals. The final rules, adopted late last month,...

8 December 1998 | ScienceNOW

Here's the Beef: Japan Clones Adult Cows

by Dennis Normile

NARA, JAPAN--Researchers here have reported the first successful cloning of adult cows. Their findings, to appear in the 11 December Science, reflect the intense effort under way in Japan to...

28 October 1998 | ScienceNOW

Japanese Universities Urged to Get Tough

by Dennis Normile

TOKYO--Japan practically invented quality control in product manufacturing. But life is different in academia. Once past the notoriously competitive entrance exam, a university student faces an easy ride: There is...

30 September 1998 | ScienceNOW

Biologist Named Russia's Science Minister

by Andrey Allakhverdov

The appointment of a physicist-turned-molecular biologist as Russia's new science minister could help the nation's natural scientists grab a bigger slice of the funding pie. Last week, Prime Minister Evgeny...

22 September 1998 | ScienceNOW

Indian Scientists Say Nuclear Tests Complete

by Pallava Bagla

NEW DELHI--Two of India's leading nuclear scientists say that there are no longer any scientific or technical reasons for the country to oppose the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). In...

11 September 1998 | ScienceNOW

India Proposes Strict Rules on Lab Animals

by Pallava Bagla

NEW DELHI--A fierce debate has erupted in India over proposed rules to create a government-run system to regulate research using animals. Animal-rights advocates say that the current system of self-regulation...

31 July 1998 | ScienceNOW

Physicist Named Japan's Education Minister

by Science News Staff

For the first time in recent memory, Japan has a minister of education, science, sports, and culture with hands-on experience as a researcher and educator. On Thursday, physicist Akito Arima,...

20 July 1998 | ScienceNOW

Indian Scientists Hit by Bomb Sanctions

by Science News Staff

NEW DELHI--Indian and Pakistani scientists are beginning to pay a price for last May's atom bomb tests--a price that many believe is unfairly penalizing civilian science. Individual U.S. agencies have...

9 July 1998 | ScienceNOW

Early Fire Doused

by Science News Staff

Archaeologists have long thought that the first campfire was lighted by Homo erectus some 500,000 years ago, in a cave near Zhoukoudian, China. But a reanalysis of the cave, reported...

23 June 1998 | ScienceNOW

Feathered Dinosaurs Discovered

by Science News Staff

Dinosaurs didn't die out completely, but instead took wing and evolved into what we now call birds. That's the conclusion of most experts who have seen new fossils of turkey-sized...

16 June 1998 | ScienceNOW

Academic Gets Top-Level Japanese Council Job

by Science News Staff

TOKYO--A leading academic has been named to help run the country's highest scientific advisory body. Endocrinologist Hiroo Imura, former president of Kyoto University, last week was appointed to one of...

28 May 1998 | ScienceNOW

Pakistan Fires Back With Nuclear Tests

by Science News Staff

Pakistan has replied to India's recent round of nuclear tests with five underground explosions today in the desolate Chagai region in Baluchistan province barely 50 kilometers from the Iranian border....

13 May 1998 | ScienceNOW

India Says Five Is Enough

by Science News Staff

India conducted a second round of nuclear testing today, exploding two sub-kiloton warheads at an underground facility in the Thar desert. The latest explosions, which according to a government statement...

7 May 1998 | ScienceNOW

Requiem for a Heavyweight Reactor

by Science News Staff

The full-scale, $10 billion version of a proposed fusion power test-bed appears to be defunct. The troubled International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) received little support from U.S. fusion experts at...

1 April 1998 | ScienceNOW

Another Kick for Japan's Economy

by Science News Staff

In the R&D sector, spending measures have refurbished university labs, bought supercomputers, and sped up the completion of major facilities such as the Super Photon Ring 8-giga-electron-volt synchrotron, which came...

24 March 1998 | ScienceNOW

Chemist to Lead China's New Science Ministry

by Science News Staff

BEIJING--The Chinese government has established a new Ministry of Science and Technology and promoted a polymer chemist, Zhu Lilan, to head it. Zhu, 59, is one of only two women...

20 March 1998 | ScienceNOW

Indian Physicist Gets Top Science Post

by Science News Staff

NEW DELHI, INDIA--India's new prime minister has named a former physics professor and senior party official to oversee the twin posts of science and technology and human resources, which includes...

17 March 1998 | ScienceNOW

Korea Inks Pact With Vaccine Institute

by Science News Staff

WASHINGTON, D.C.--An international effort to strengthen vaccine research and usage in East Asia took an important step forward with the signing here today of an agreement between the International Vaccine...

11 March 1998 | ScienceNOW

The First Seafarers

by Science News Staff

Our early ancestor Homo erectus may have been smart and social enough to build seafaring rafts. This flattering portrait of these early humans is reinforced by new dates for stone...

27 January 1998 | ScienceNOW

Reform Shatters 'Iron Rice Bowl'

by Science News Staff

BEIJING--As many as half of the 49,000 researchers in the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) could lose their jobs under a plan to modernize operations and cut costs. The changes...

23 January 1998 | ScienceNOW

Indian Scientists Claim Lab Corruption

by Science News Staff

NEW DELHI--A union of scientists has accused India's main civilian scientific agency of widespread corruption and mismanagement. The All India CSIR Scientific Workers Association (SWA), which represents some 5000 Indian...

22 December 1997 | ScienceNOW

Korea Adopts Plan to Strengthen R&D

by Science News Staff

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA--Despite an economy on the brink of bankruptcy, South Korea has given a strong vote of confidence to increased public funding for research. On 12 December, a panel...

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