■MEDICINE
Cancer center sets up lab
Taipei Medical University Hospital’s Cancer Center has recently set up a laboratory for research, launching the “bench-to-bedside” approach that is aimed at turning scientific discoveries into practical applications. University president Chiu Wen-ta (邱文達) said the new facility was expected to help upgrade Taiwan’s medical treatment expertise and quality. Chiu Chung-feng (邱仲峰), the lab’s executive director, said that unlike conventional medical laboratories, the new lab would focus on “translating” basic medical research into clinical treatments for various forms of cancer. Equipped with an advanced single-view 3D optical imaging system, the IVIS 200, the translational research lab allows researchers to observe cancer cells in the body of a living lab animal and enables experiments to more closely approach reality, the university said.
■HEALTH
Don’t count sheep: doctor
People who are unable to sleep should “stop counting sheep” and get out of bed if they cannot get to sleep 20 minutes after turning in, said Yang Chien-ming (楊建銘), an associate professor of psychology at National Chengchi University. He said that many people in Taiwan suffered from sleep problems that usually get worse as a result of common misconceptions about sleep. These misconceptions include the idea that strenuous exercise before bed aids restful sleep, he said, pointing out that this is incorrect, as intense physical activity does not help people go to sleep, but instead “awakens” the nervous system. He said if people found themselves tossing and turning for more than 20 minutes, they should get up and do something else until they feel sleepy.
■SOCIETY
Illustrators showcase work
Twenty-four award-winning Taiwanese illustrators will showcase their work at an annual international children’s book fair to be held in the Italian city of Bologna next week. All 24 of the illustrators have had their work commended by the Bologna Children’s Book Fair management over the past 20 years, said Linden Lin (林載爵), chairman of the Taipei Book Fair Foundation, which is organizing the Taiwan pavilion activities at the Bologna book fair scheduled for tomorrow through Thursday. Artist Hsu Su-hsia (徐素霞) saw her work cited in the 1989 event, making her the first Taiwanese artist to win such an honor. Since then, 23 Taiwanese artists have won similar recognition at the fair, one of the world’s most important international illustration competitions. Lin said 21 local children’s book publishing companies would showcase a collection of more than 400 titles in the upcoming Bologna fair.
■CRIME
Kinmen obtains drug dog
Kinmen County obtained its first-ever drug sniffer dog yesterday to help with its narcotics detection operations. The two-year-old black Labrador, Tango, was put into service at customs in Kinmen’s Shuitou Port shortly after it arrived from Kaohsiung City, said Huang Chu-chang (黃鉅昌), head of the Kinmen branch of the Kaohsiung Customs Office. Since direct ferry links between Taiwan’s Kinmen and Matsu islands and several ports in China’s Fujian Province were expanded to include people from Taiwan proper in June last year, the number of passengers using the service, commonly known as the mini links, has reached 3,500 per day, Huang said. As a result, there has been an increase in drug trafficking across the Taiwan Strait via the two outlying islands, which underscores Kinmen’s need to step up its anti-drug inspections, Huang said.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not