Chinese scientist Tu Youyou was awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for her contribution in fighting malaria. The 84-year-old won the prize for her work using artemisinin to treat malaria based on a traditional Chinese herb treatment, making her China's first medicine Nobel laureate.
In late 1960s, Tu started to chair a government project aimed at eradicating malaria. To find a new treatment to fight the disease, Tu and her colleagues looked through many ancient medical books and screened 2,000 recipes before they extracted artemisinin from sweet wormwood, a traditional Chinese herb.
Chinese sci-fi novel wins world recognition
Liu Cixin, a Chinese sci-fi novelist, made headlines in Chinese media after winning the highly prestigious Hugo Award for sci-fi and fantasy stories in August. The Hugo Award was for his The Three-Body Problem, the first book of a trilogy in which the entire solar system is flattened into two dimensions in an apocalyptic battle between humans and aliens.
The Chinese editions of the entire trilogy have sold more than 2.1 million copies and have been translated into English. And a film adapted from the first installment of the trilogy is to be released next year.
The Three-Body Problem also made the shortlist of another top science-fiction award, the Nebula.
Related: Hugo Award winner Liu Cixin: I'm just writing for the beer money
Chinese sci-fi novel wins world recognition
Liu Cixin, a Chinese sci-fi novelist, made headlines in Chinese media after winning the highly prestigious Hugo Award for sci-fi and fantasy stories in August. The Hugo Award was for his The Three-Body Problem, the first book of a trilogy in which the entire solar system is flattened into two dimensions in an apocalyptic battle between humans and aliens.
The Chinese editions of the entire trilogy have sold more than 2.1 million copies and have been translated into English. And a film adapted from the first installment of the trilogy is to be released next year.
The Three-Body Problem also made the shortlist of another top science-fiction award, the Nebula.
Related: Hugo Award winner Liu Cixin: I'm just writing for the beer money
Beidou system extends its reach to global users
A new-generation satellite of China's Beidou Navigation Satellite System was launched in March, enabling the Beidou system to expand its coverage out of the Asia-Pacific area.
The Beidou system, named after the Chinese term for the Big Dipper constellation, is a domestic alternative to the United States-operated GPS. The first Beidou satellite was launched in 2000. By 2012, a regional network of the Beidou system had taken shape, providing positioning, navigation, timing and short-messaging services in China and several other Asian countries.
China launches its first dark matter satellite
China successfully launched its first dark matter satellite at a launch center in Northwest China's Gansu province on Dec 17. The satellite, nicknamed "Wukong", is named after the heroic Monkey King in Chinese class novel the Journey to the West.
Designed in a one-cubic-meter box weighing 1.9 metric tons and with four probes aboard, in the next three years, Wukong will search for dark matter, a theoretical form of matter which is believed to make up a very large part of the cosmos and holds the key to understanding the phenomena that could not be explained with current knowledge of physics.
Internet expo sheds lights on the future
The 2nd World Internet Conference was held in the riverside town of Wuzhen, East China's Zhejiang province, in December. The event attracted dozens of global Internet heavyweights and called for the building of a cyberspace community of shared destiny.
As part of the event, the Light of the Internet Expo highlighted cutting-edge technology such as driverless cars, 3D printing and the Internet of Things, and also ideas that could become daily items in the near future, such as "virtual fitting rooms" which help one try on new clothes without the trouble of taking them on and off.
