The InterAcademy Partnership (IAP) relaunched the IAP Communique on Tropical Forests on Mar. 21, in celebration of the UN's International Day of Forests and raising awareness of tropical forest protection.

LIU Chenli, director of the Institute of Synthetic Biology under the Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology (SIAT), an affliated institution of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and president of Shenzhen Institute of Synthetic Biology Innovation, was appointed as the Ambassador of American Society for Microbiology (ASM) Country Ambassador to China for his "remarkable academic experience, demonstrated leadership".

The ecosystem-based adaptation planning tool "ALivE – Adaptation, Livelihoods and Ecosystems" user manual in Chinese and Russian languages is officially released recently, with financial support from Alliance of International Science Organizations in the Belt and Road Region (ANSO).

The Isotope Laboratory of Gansu Province, which centers on isotopes and related technologies, was officially established on January 20th in Lanzhou of China's Northwest Province Gansu. The laboratory will focus on cutting-edge research on the synthesis of superheavy elements and the island of stability, development and demonstration of isotope technologies.

"Bay area development begins with globalization and depends on high-degree openness," said PAN Jiaofeng, president of the Institutes of Science and Development (CASISD) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, at the First Global Bay Area Forum held on 11-12 January, 2020. The theme of the Forum was "Development of the Bay Area and the World".

On January 1, the Bi^{36 +} beam with the energy of 150 MeV/u was extracted smoothly within 3 seconds from the main cooling storage ring at the Heavy Ion Research Facility in Lanzhou (HIRFL). It is the first time that the beam with the maximum magnetic rigidity has been extracted by the slow extraction system at HIRFL-CSRm. This great improvement will benefit users in material research, bioscience and other application science at HIRFL.

The Heavy Ion Research Facility in Lanzhou (HIRFL) provided Bi⁵⁵⁺ beam for users on January 7. The beam was generated by the combination of three different types of accelerators. The new operation mode will greatly improve the efficiency and capacity of HIRFL.

A Collaborative Lab was established to support cross-border data flows by the Computer Network Information Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and its partners on December 26, 2019. With cross-border data flows as the research priority, the lab will support the big data development strategy and the growth of digital economy through its research on regulating the cross-boarder data flows from various aspects such as policies, industries, technologies and applications.

The 8th High Energy Cosmic Radiation Detection (HERD) International Workshop was held in Xi'an from Dec. 16 to 18 to enhance cooperation in indirect dark matter searches with unprecedented sensitivity, precise cosmic ray spectrum and composition measurements up to the knee energy, as well as the and gamma-ray monitoring and surveys.

The time interoperability solution of navigation system proposed by the National Time Service Center on behalf of BeiDou Satellite Navigation System (BDS) was written in the official text of the joint statement issued by the 14th meeting of the International Committee on Global Navigation Satellite Systems (ICG-14) on December 13, 2019.

China ranks 1st in 33 out of 137 global research fronts, according to the report "Research Fronts 2019" jointly released by the Institutes of Science and Development of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CASISD), the National Science Library of Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Clarivate Analytics on Nov 26.

Prof. WANG Yifang, director of China's Institute of High Energy Physics and a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Prof. Kam-Biu Luk, a physicist from the University of California, Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, won the Future Science Prize in physical sciences for their experimental discovery of a new type of neutrino oscillation. The award ceremony was held in Beijing on Nov. 17.

Scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Institute of Physical and Chemical Research attended the third CAS-RIKEN Young Scientists Seminar held in the Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology on Nov. 4.

Dark Matter Day, a worldwide festival to celebrate the search for an as-yet-undetectable form of matter that could make up the bulk of the known universe, substance was celebrated in China at the China Science & Technology Museum on October 31. Over 300 science lovers from middle schools, universities and research institutes across Beijing joined the event, which was also broadcast live to more than four thousand viewers across the country.

Prof. ZHU Jianqiang from Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences was elected as one of the 94 new fellows of The Optical Society of America(OSA) last week. Fellows are selected based on several factors, including contributions to education, research, engineering, business and the community.

Dubbed "China's cradle of modern astronomy", the Purple Mountain Observatory in Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu province, is the first modern astronomy research institute to be established by Chinese scientists. In 1928, the Institute of Astronomy was set up, before changing its name to the Purple Mountain Observatory in 1950.

Chinese, Australian and U.S. scientists used the world's fastest supercomputer Summit to process simulated observations of the early universe ahead of the construction of the radio telescope to be built in Western Australia and South Africa.

In the wilderness of Daocheng, southwest China's Sichuan Province, 4,400 meters above sea level, Chinese scientists are constructing a cosmic ray observation station on an area equivalent to 200 soccer fields.