The directors of two of the world’s top astronomy organizations — the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and the East Asian Observatory (EAO) — yesterday signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) vowing to enhance collaboration and exchanges in the field of astronomy.
At a meeting presided over by Academia Sinica in Taipei, EAO director-general and Academia Sinica research fellow Paul Ho (賀曾樸) signed the MOU with ESO director-general Tim de Zeeuw as a token of future collaborations.
Under the MOU, the two organizations are to pool and manage resources to bolster multinational collaborations, the scientists said.
The signature event also saw Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics director Chu You-hua (朱有花) sign an MOU with her EAO counterparts, including National Astronomical Observatory of Japan director-general Masahiko Hayashi, Korean Astronomy and Space Science Institute representative Young Chol Minh and Peking University Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics director Luis Ho (何子山).
Chu said that the EAO, despite being a nascent organization, comprises four of Asia’s top-caliber research institutes in astronomy.
Chu said that astronomy nowadays is no longer confined to “gazing at stars,” but involves a high degree of technical support from other fields; for example, from mechanics and electricians, on ambitious astronomy projects.
Therefore, the EAO would seek to learn from the ESO — which celebrates its 51st anniversary this year — and seek to achieve the “lofty” goal of aspiring to its status as a global leader in astronomy, Chu said.
Zeeuw said that the ESO operates mainly in Paranal, Chile, where the organization’s Very Large Telescope is located, but seeks to explore collaboration possibilities in the northern hemisphere, especially on Mauna Kea, a dormant volcano in Hawaii where the EAO’s James Clerk Maxwell Submillimeter Telescope (JCMT) is situated.
He said that the ESO hopes to raise its current level of engagement in scientific projects related to JCMT and likewise hopes to work more closely with the EAO on projects regarding the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, a collaborative project between North America, East Asia and the EU.
The ESO last year embarked on a project to build the world’s largest optical telescope, the European Extremely Large Telescope, which would span 39m and is scheduled to be completed in 2024, Zeeuw said.
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:
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
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
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater