From our archives

August 17, 1983

Software for oil industry

China has developed its own computer software for design and analysis of offshore structures, according to the Design and Research Institute of the Bohai Oil Company.

The system fills gaps in China's computer software and will be especially useful in designing offshore platforms, which account for 50 percent of the cost of offshore development.

In addition, the new software increases China's competitiveness in bidding for offshore oil development contracts both at home and abroad.

Help for pandas

Although the Ministry of Forestry has allotted 300,000 yuan, more than 4 million yuan is still needed to save China's giant pandas from starvation, ministry officials said.

The ministry has come up with three emergency measures, which include putting food in places frequented by pandas, moving some pandas to areas where bamboo is plentiful, and feeding them in farm-like preserves.

The ministry is also planning studies on the planting and growth of bamboo, hoping that it can be planted in the mountainous regions inhabited by pandas so that different areas would be on different growth cycles.

Satellite station

Construction of a meteorological satellite ground receiving station began in Beijing on August 14, 1983.

The station, part of a system for receiving and processing data transmitted by meteorological satellites, is scheduled for completion by 1985.

With the help of cloud-chart receiving facilities, it monitors and processes data released by meteorological satellites and relays it through a microwave communications system to the data processing center.

(China Daily 08/17/2008 page11)