FLUTTERING WINGS: A butterfly pictured during a showcase of rare species at the Hunan Forest Botanical Garden in Changsha, central China's Hunan Province, which was opened on September 16 (LONG HONGTAO)

Eco-fragility Record

The Ministry of Environmental Protection announced on September 16 that it will be marking China's ecologically sensitive and vulnerable zones before the end of 2014.

Guidelines will also be issued to clarify the specifics of demarcation of these areas, as well as related procedures and requirements.

The area of ecologically vulnerable zones in key regions, such as the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region that is dominated by grasslands and deserts, should be no less than 20 percent of its total area, according to the statement.

It said that the Central Government will form policies and regulations regarding the management of ecologically vulnerable zones in 2014 to define the obligations of communities, individuals and levels of government in protecting them.

Organ Procurement

South China's Guangdong Province is establishing organ procurement organizations (OPOs), local health authorities said on September 14.

The Department of Health of Guangdong said that 80 medical personnel are to receive training and become coordinators working at the newly established OPOs.

Information on organs collected by the new OPOs will be recorded in the OPOs system, and hospitals in the province will be given priority in obtaining the organs, officials said.

Rules effective nationwide on September 1 stipulate that organs shall be donated to OPOs authorized by provincial health authorities, and distribution of the organs must be done through the China Organ Transplant Response System (www.cot.org.cn).

Relocation Award

The Chinese Government has recently allocated 3.68 billion yuan ($597million) for people relocated over the construction of large or medium-sized reservoirs, according to a Ministry of Finance statement issued on September 16.

This allocation follows the making of a policy stating that each relocated person shall receive 600 yuan ($98) every year for 20 years from July 1, 2006 and that funding payments should be given out quarterly.

The Central Government has spent a total of 134.28 billion yuan ($22 billion) in supporting reservoir relocatees, the statement said.

The funding allocated has grown at 11.3 percent annually, it added.

Laser Innovation

A deep ultraviolet (DUV) solid-state laser device, invented by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), has recently passed testing, making China the only country in the world in possession of such technology. Deep ultraviolet light waves are light waves whose wavelength is shorter than 200 nanometers, far outside the light spectrum observable to the human eye.

The use of potassium beryllium fluoroborate (KBBF) had previously created a setback for the project. KBBF is a non-linear optical crystal that can transform laser light into DUV for use in solid state lasers. Before, China lacked the proper technology or equipment to cut it into the sophisticated prisms needed.

The created device is capable of taking the output from a diode-pumped solid-state laser device and shortening its wavelength through frequency multiplication. The laser used at the CAS had an original wavelength of 1,046 nanometers which, through the use of the KBBF prism coupling device, was successfully shortened to 177.3 nanometers. The CAS experiments mark the first time that such short wavelengths have ever been recorded.