SEOUL, May 17 — President Lee Myung-bak pledged Thursday to spare no efforts to support a state-run research institute devoted to basic science.

He stressed South Korea should focus more on source technologies to make the leap into the ranks of advanced nations.

In an international symposium celebrating the opening of the Institute for Basic Science, Lee said he will provide every possible support to make the research center a globally recognized "dream institute" that top scientists from around the world want to join.

"We have so far copied and followed advanced technologies," Lee said during the symposium at the institute located in the central city of Daejeon, some 150 kilometers south of Seoul.

"But to make a leap into the ranks of advanced, top-class nations, we have to make a history of creation based on basic science and fundamental technologies."

The institute is the main organization of the government's International Science and Business Belt project that calls for creating massive research complexes of world-class institutes and facilities, including a particle accelerator, to help develop cutting-edge technologies.

The science-business belt project, which calls for a 5.2 trillion won (US$ 4.5 billion) investment by 2017, will become a global source of "new knowledge" that will enrich South Korea and beyond, Lee said.(PNA/Yonhap) hbc/jnc

LONG BEACH, United States, May 17 — North America's alternative fuel and clean vehicle stakeholders gathered here Wednesday for a three-day expo to examine challenges facing the industry.

More than 2,500 representatives were present at the 2012 Alternative Clean Transportation (ACT) Expo.

It showcases the latest in advanced clean vehicle technologies and funding opportunities, and provides a forum for policy and regulation updates.

While the gasoline and diesel prices have topped four dollars per gallon in the United States, those clean vehicles powered by electric, hybrid, hydrogen, natural gas, propane and renewable fuel technologies give people hope for new energy for transportation vehicles in the future.

Besides the show of vehicles with clean energy, 21 different conference sessions are planned during the three-day event.

Key players from across the spectrum of electric vehicles, technologies, and equipment gathered at the expo for an honest assessment of the current state of the EV (Electric Vehicle) industry and the challenges and opportunities of a zero-emission transportation system.

The year of 2011 saw a dramatic rise in EV availability and the increasing reality of a future transportation system powered by electricity in the United States. Key EV deployment projects are being launched across the U.S. in every vehicle class and awareness among individual consumers is rising.

With EV technology for light-duty vehicles now widely available, electrifying medium- and heavy-duty vehicles will be the next frontier for large deployment projects and demonstrations in order to further develop the market.

BYD, a Chinese company that established its office in Los Angeles last year, showed its eBus and electric cars at the expo.

The company also showed its overnight chargers and multi-charging facilities to provide charging services to eTaxi and eBuses.

Natural gas industry leaders also gathered to discuss many opportunities for natural gas as an alternative fuel for all vehicle types — light-, medium- and heavy-duty vehicles — and across a variety of applications.

Natural gas, which includes compressed, liquefied and renewable natural gas, is taking on a significant presence at the event.

Transit fleets across California, from Sacramento Regional Transit to San Diego Metropolitan Transit System to the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro) have embraced compressed natural gas as a cost-effective way to reduce their emissions and carbon footprint.

With 2,200 buses, Metro has the largest fleet of natural-gas buses in the United States.

This fleet has saved millions of dollars in annual fuel costs and replaced more than 250 million gallons of diesel. With the CNG, Metro has reduced pollution of smog-forming chemicals, particulate matter and greenhouse gas emissions by over 500,000 tons, according to the California Natural Gas Vehicle Partnership.

Rich Kolodziej, president of NGVAmerica, said that spurred by prices at the pump that are 1.50 dollars to 2.00 dollars less per gallon, the U.S. natural gas vehicles market is taking off on all fronts.

According to Kolodziej, almost 40 percent of the trash trucks purchased in the United States last year were natural gas-powered ones.

Manufacturers are now forecasting that in 2012 natural gas will represent between 50 percent and 70 percent of their orders.

And in transit, more than one in four buses were natural gas-powered in the United States, he said.

To serve the growing markets, fueling stations are being installed at a record rate by both traditional station owners and operators and by new entrants, Kolodziej said.

On Tuesday, expo attendees toured Los Angeles Unified School District's state-of-the-art time-fill CNG station, the largest time-fill site in the country built for the largest operator of natural gas school buses.

LAUSD currently operates its 340 CNG buses at its Transportation Services Division in the City of Gardena. The station includes 311 time-fill hoses to fuel LAUSD' s fleet, and includes additional alternative options for the school district' s 61 propane school buses.

Expo attendees also had a chance to tour the first-of-its-kind hydrogen station in Orange County.

The Orange County Sanitation District is now making renewable electricity, heat and hydrogen fuel from wastewater derived biogas.

The project was developed by a partnership that includes the U.S. Department of Energy, the California Air Resources Board, the Orange County Sanitation District and private industry.(PNA/Xinhua) hbc/jnc

ASTANA, May 17 — More than 200 representatives from 57 Muslim countries and 25 international organizations will attend the Islamic Conference of Environment Ministers to open in Astana on Thursday, May 17.

“The delegates to the forum to be held under the auspices of the Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (ISESCO) will discuss pressing environmental issues in the countries of the Muslim world and Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s initiatives: the Global Energy and Environment Strategy and the Green Bridge Partnership Programme,” the Kazakhstani Environment Ministry, which is one of the organisers of the forum, told Itar-Tass.

“Support for Kazakhstan’s initiatives by the Muslim world is very important ahead of the U.N. conference on sustainable development to be held in Brazil,” a ministry official said.

The organizers hope that “the conference will become a place for dialogue among Islamic countries and will help solve global environmental problems”.

The environment ministers of the 57 member states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation will discuss an updated draft of the General Framework of the Islamic Agenda for Sustainable Development, the draft Executive Plan for the Implementation of the Strategy for Disaster Risk Reduction and Management in Islamic Countries, and the draft Islamic Declaration on Sustainable Development within the framework of the Islamic world’s participation in the Rio+20 Summit.

The conference’s participants will also examine the draft document on “Green Economy: its Role and Relevance in Islamic Countries” and a progress report on implementation of the project of “Islamic Academy for the Environment and Sustainable Development”.

The conference will be organized by ISESCO and the General Presidency of Meteorology and Environment Protection (PME) of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, in coordination with the General Secretariat of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, and in cooperation with the Ministry of Environment Protection of the Republic of Kazakhstan. The Conference will also be attended by the representatives of concerned international and regional organizations.

The Fifth Islamic Conference of Environment Ministers comes ten years after the convening of the first session in June 2002, in Jeddah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, during which a founding document entitled “Jeddah Commitments on Sustainable Development” was adopted, laying down the first pillars of joint Islamic action in the field of the environment.

The Fifth Islamic Conference of Environment Ministers takes on paramount importance considering that it will examine a number of reference documents aimed at developing joint Islamic action in the field of the environment at the level of OIC Member States through ISESCO.

One of the most important documents is the Draft Islamic Declaration on Sustainable Development” which will be presented as part of the participation of the Islamic world in the Rio+20 Summit, due to be held by the United Nations in Brazil, in June 2012. (PNA/Itar-Tass) DCT/rsm

KHARKOV, May 17 — Members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) arrived at Kharkov’s railway hospital Wednesday for a meeting with former Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko who is undergoing medical treatment there.

Mailis Reps (Estonia, ALDE) and Marietta de Pourbaix-Lundin (Sweden, EPP/CD), PACE co-rapporteurs for the monitoring of Ukraine, came to Kharkov for a meeting with Timoshenko and her lawyers.

They also talked to the lawyers of the imprisoned former government ministers, Yuri Lutsenko and Valery Ivashchenko.

These meetings will be held during a monitoring visit by the co-rapporteurs (15-17 May), the purpose of which is to assess the implementation of PACE Resolution 1862 (2012) on the functioning of democratic institutions in Ukraine.

In Kiev, Reps and de Pourbaix-Lundin are due to meet the Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich, the parliamentary committee responsible for the implementation of Resolution 1862 (2012), the General Prosecutor, representatives of political parties and the Ukrainian delegation to PACE. They will also meet local government and NGO representatives in Kharkov.

The co-rapporteurs previously travelled to Kiev for a monitoring visit on March 27-29, 2012, following which they made a statement.

The Euronest Parliamentary Assembly earlier urged the Ukrainian authorities to stop denying former Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko her basic human right to medical care.

In an urgent resolution adopted in Baku, Azerbaijan, on Wednesday, April 4, the Assembly, which brings together Members of the European Parliament and MPs from the EU's eastern neighbor countries, called on the Ukrainian authorities to allow Timoshenko to undergo regular independent toxicology tests in the EU, medical treatment outside the prison system and regular health checks by international medical experts. It notes that these experts have encountered obstacles when trying to assess her condition.

Euronest members urge the Ukrainian authorities to guarantee the fundamental right to health and well-being of Timoshenko and also to ensure that she gets the medical care that she needs, in line with international standards.

Timoshenko has agreed to resume the course of medical treatment she was receiving at Kharkov’s railway hospital, the press service of the Ukrainian Health Ministry said on Wednesday, May 16.

“German doctor Harms, Central Clinical Hospital Head Afanasyev and physician Fursa visited Timoshenko this morning. The patient agreed to resume the course of treatment recommended to her,” the press service said.

On Tuesday, May 15, Timoshenko refused to take medical treatment claiming that the State Penitentiary Service and mass media had published information about her treatment without her consent. (PNA/Itar-Tass)

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SINGAPORE, May 17 — Scientists from the National University of Singapore claim they have discovered a way to kill cancer cells by 'starving' them of energy, the school said Thursday.

The research revolves around a drug-led compound, BPTES.

The scientists, who are from the Department of Biological Sciences and Mechanobiology Institute, said the compound can deprive cancer cells of energy and stop them from growing into a tumour.

The compound is undergoing pre-clinical trials as a potential drug.

NUS said this is the first time a research group has provided evidence showing how a drug-led compound suppresses tumour formation. Building on the new findings, the NUS team also derived positive results for a dual-drug treatment regime involving BPTES.

The team found that it kills kidney and breast cancer cells more effectively.

NUS said the next step is to conduct more studies to determine whether a combination of drugs would be even more effective.

The research team will also look into how it can make BPTES more efficient, as well as ways to lower its side-effects. (PNA/Xinhua) hbc/utb

MOSCOW, May 17 — The Soyuz TMA-04M spacecraft with the new crew for the International Space Station (ISS), launched from the Baikonur Space Center in Kazakhstan on Tuesday, will dock with the ISS on Thursday morning in an automatic mode, a Russian Mission Control spokesman told RIA Novosti.

“The spacecraft will dock with the Poisk small research module of the ISS’ Russian segment at 08:38 a.m. Moscow Time [04:38 GMT],” the spokesman said.

The new expedition to the space station comprises Russian cosmonauts Gennady Padalka and Sergei Revin, and NASA astronaut Joseph Acaba.

They will join NASA astronaut Don Pettit, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko and European Space Agency astronaut Andre Kuipers, who arrived at the ISS in December to spend 147 days aboard the orbital station.

The new crew is expected to stay on board the ISS for 126 days. Their scientific program comprises over a hundred experiments and a spacewalk. (PNA/RIA Novosti) DCT/rsm

LOS ANGELES, May 17 — NASA is lending the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX), a space telescope that for the last nine years has been surveying the cosmos in ultraviolet light, to Caltech (California Institute of Technology) which will continue operating and managing it through the support of private funders.

It is the first agreement of its kind, Caltech said Wednesday in a press release.

Caltech researchers has led GALEX's mission in the past and now has taken over the operation from NASA.

Launched in April 2003, GALEX was designed to study how galaxies change and evolve over time.

Because young, high-mass stars are especially hot, they radiate a lot of ultraviolet light, meaning that the brighter the ultraviolet light from a galaxy, the faster its stars are forming.

By observing in ultraviolet wavelengths, GALEX has been able to measure the formation rates of stars in millions of galaxies.

The telescope has helped astronomers determine how the rates of star formation in other galaxies have changed over the last 8 billion years and how that process leads to the evolution of those galaxies.

Caltech scientists will give GALEX new missions.

Having orbited Earth for nearly a decade, GALEX is no longer a young instrument which is actually an advantage, says Chris Martin, professor of physics at Caltech and the principal investigator of GALEX.

Because it is now entering the late stage of its life, Martin says, astronomers can afford to push the telescope to its limits.

Before, the team had to be extra careful not to damage its detectors by overexposing it to really bright stars. But now, he says, astronomers can be bolder in exploring the ultraviolet universe than ever before.

This means that while GALEX has mainly looked at other galaxies in the past, now it can focus on our own.

"Our number one goal is to complete the survey of the full sky and the entire Milky Way," Martin was quoted as saying.

One of the scientific goals of this survey is to help astronomers better understand the lifecycle of stars, and another goal is for GALEX to look for flashes of ultraviolet light.

The telescope will also aid in the hunt for other planets, for example, by pointing astronomers to newborn stars that may harbor alien worlds still warm from their heat-generating formation processes.

Since there are no other ultraviolet survey missions in the works, GALEX will be the one and only telescope of its kind for a while, Martin says.

Caltech's GALEX team has already begun collaborating with several groups to pursue new research avenues, the university said.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has been managing the mission and built the science instrument.

In addition to Caltech and JPL, the GALEX operations team includes members from Columbia University, the Carnegie Institution for Science, the Orbital Sciences Corporation, and the Universal Space Network. (PNA/Xinhua) DCT/LOR/jnc

SEOUL, May 17 — South Korea is set to launch a multipurpose satellite to carry out earth observation from a space center in Japan early Friday, the government said Thursday.

The Ministry of Education, Science and Technology said in a statement the Arirang-3 satellite is scheduled to take off at around 1:39 a.m. Friday from Tanegashima Space Center on Tanegashima Island in western Japan.

The satellite will be carried into orbit by Japan's H-IIA rocket, and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), which has organized the launch, said the liftoff will go smoothly citing favorable weather conditions, according to the ministry.

The satellite, equipped with a high-resolution optical camera, will operate at an altitude of 685 kms for the next four years to provide highly detailed images of the Earth's surface.

South Korea launched its first Earth-observatory satellite Arirang-1 in 1999, and since 2004 the country has invested heavily, spending more than 286.6 billion won (245.5 million U.S. dollars) on its satellite project. (PNA/Xinhua) hbc/utb

ILOILO CITY, May 17 — Fifty-nine Singaporean students who are part of the Youth Expedition Project/Overseas Community Service in three Iloilo towns have completed their projects.

Before long, they will return to their country and report their experiences, officials said.

They personally thanked Gov. Arthur Defensor Sr. Thursday for supporting their stay in the province.

YEP/OCS is a worldwide Singapore Youth Project of the Office of the President of Singapore through the Singapore National Youth Council channeled through Singapore-based NGOs or educational institutions.

The municipality of Concepcion became the first beneficiary of the project in 2003.

This year the students were deployed in the towns of Concepcion, Batad and Anilao.

In Concepcion, the students helped complete the Sangguniang Kabataan Center and engaged in Information Technology teaching and mangrove planting.

In Batad, the students’ projects include extension of children’s playground, furnishing of Women’s Crisis Center, mangrove planting, IT teaching and corn husk handicraft making.

In Anilao, the students worked on the construction of water system in Brgy. Balunos and also engaged in IT teaching and mangrove planting.

Another batch composed of 35 students from Nanyang Technological University will be arriving in July this year to work on various projects in Ajuy.

YEP/OCS is being supported by the Singaporean International Foundation, Singapore Polytechnic, Mercy Relief, Singapore Management University and NTU. (PNA)

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MOSCOW, May 17 — A NASA astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts docked with the International Space Station (ISS) early on Thursday, beginning a four-month mission aboard the orbiting complex.

A Russian Soyuz TMA-04M capsule carrying NASA astronaut Joe Acaba and cosmonauts Gennady Padalka and Sergei Revin docked with the ISS at 4:36 a.m. GMT as the two spacecraft sailed 400 kilometers above the border between Mongolia and Kazakhstan, Russian Mission Control said.

"Everything went off smoothly," Padalka told Mission Control.

The trio began their journey on Tuesday when they launched from the Baikonur Space Center in Kazakhstan, in Russia's first manned flight for almost five months. They were originally scheduled to blast off on March 29, but the start date was postponed due to technical problems.

The new arrivals will join fellow Expedition 31 members, Commander Oleg Kononenko, NASA's Don Pettit and Dutchman Andre Kuipers, who have been aboard the station for almost five months since arriving in December.

The hatches between the two spacraft will be opened around 08:00 GMT, when the vehicles will have undergone leak and pressure checks. The three will then enter the station itself.

The docking came as Acaba marks his 45th birthday, NASA said.

He had visited the ISS in March 2009 aboard the space shuttle Discovery, the U.S. space agency said.

For Padalka, it is his fourth long-duration spaceflight and his third aboard the outpost. Revin is travelling into space for the first time.

Their mission, expected to last for 126 days, will involve about a hundred experiments, a space wall and the expected arrival of the first commercial cargo craft at the ISS. (PNA/RIA Novosti) DCT/rsm