IN BRIEF (Page 2)

Health

Cosmetic surgery ban for minors

Guangzhou may become the first Chinese city to ban juveniles from receiving nonessential plastic surgery, under a draft legal amendment on the protection of minors.

The rules would also require doctors to inform under-18s and their legal guardians about the risks involved before they undergo any plastic surgery for medical reasons.

People have been undergoing plastic surgery at an ever younger age in recent years, said Yang Jianguang, a law professor at Sun Yat-sen University.

In the pursuit of a fashionable or pretty look, they may make an ill-thought-out decision to undergo a procedure that could harm their health, Yang said. Yang, who has headed a panel of experts drafting the law, said regulating the rapidly growing cosmetic surgery industry is crucial.

Center to boost organ donations

The Red Cross Society of China is setting up a new national organ donation management center, which aims to encourage donations and increase their number.

About 1.5 million Chinese people need organ transplants each year on the mainland, but only 10,000 can get them because of a lack of organs, the Ministry of Health says.

The new center will work with health authorities and others to run a nationwide donation system and help ease the long-time strain on donations for transplants, said Wang Ping, director of the relief and health department of the society.

The system is open to public organ donations after death, Wang said. Donations from executed prisoners, which China's organ transplants have relied on as a main source for donations, are not covered.

Education

Testing time for supervisors

As figures show that the number of postgraduate students has more than doubled over the past decade, concerns are being raised about the growing pressures that the students' supervisors are facing.

Universities and higher institutions planned to recruit 584,000 postgraduates this year, compared with 268,000 in 2003, the Ministry of Education said.

In the past, one supervisor had one to two students. Now some young faculty members have a dozen, said Zhu Xiaoman, a professor at Beijing Normal University's School of Education.

Students used to follow supervisors closely to benefit from their experience, but nowadays students were more like products off an assembly line, Zhu said.

Security

Tougher penalties mapped out

Foreigners carrying out illegal surveys, mapping without permission or marking locations of key facilities without authorization, will face tougher penalties in measures to enhance security of strategic areas.

The issues are being discussed as authorities draft amendments to the National Surveying and Mapping Law. The State Administration of Surveying, Mapping and Geo-information said the amendments have been included in the State Council's work agenda for this year.

Li Weibing, deputy director of legislation and industry management for the administration, said he hopes the draft will be finished this year and that the law can take force by 2017.

Society

Stand proud, dear daughter

Chinese daughters tend to show more filial piety to their parents than sons, according to the results of a survey revealed by the newspaper Beijing News.

The survey, conducted by the Center for Healthy Aging and Development Studies of Peking University, said 45 percent of the very elderly attended to by their daughters and sons-in-law are more content than those taken care of by their sons and daughters-in-law. Also, the death rate of elderly citizens who raised daughters only is 10 percent less than the death rate of those with sons only.

Environment

Monitoring of bay to be stepped up

Three marine monitoring stations will be set up in Bohai Bay following oil spills, an official said. The stations, the first of which will be built next year, will be sited along coastal areas in Tianjin, said Zhang Qiufeng, director of the Tianjin Marine Environmental Monitoring Center at the State Oceanic Administration.

The stations will collect data on water temperature, pollution and salt content daily, and will greatly improve forecasts and help coordinate emergency response measures, such as for an oil spill, Zhang said.

Tianjin now has only one marine environment monitoring station, in Tanggu at the mouth of the Haihe River, but nearby development has diminished its ability to monitor the bay area.

China Daily

(China Daily 10/26/2012 page2)