>>18531229
>>18531230
Apologies for the double-post and the lack of the photo, Anons. The uploading was acting a little goofy and I had no control. Here's a screenshot of a Boston Globe article that seems to be celebrating Deval Patrick's strange trip to China, and it's noteworthy, in my opinion, because of the following quote aboutRNAtechnology:
Members of the delegation will also meet with executives of China's Hainan Airlines in hopes of establishing direct flights between Boston and Beijing, possibly to begin in 2009, according to Massachusetts Port Authority chief executive Thomas Kinton, who said talks have been underway for two years.
"I can't tell you as I sit here right now whether we'll be ready to announce it before we go, but we're certainly getting closer," Patrick said.
Yesterday, the Massachusetts visitors and their Chinese hosts traded optimistic speeches and ate lunch in a glass atrium in a high-tech business park adjacent to Beijing's Tsinghua University, surrounded by high-rises that are home to the Chinese offices of such companies as Google, Microsoft Corp., and the Chinese Internet portal Sohu.com. Several speakers from the Massachusetts group made noble attempts at short Mandarin pronunciations during their remarks.
One of those on the trip, University of Massachusetts Medical School professor Craig Mello, was named an honorary professor at Tsinghua University during a ceremony yesterday. Mello, who shared the 2006 Nobel Prize in medicine for work on a gene-blocking technology called RNAi, said he hopes to set up a facility in China to work with a new life science center planned for UMass.
"We'd like to partner with China, and with Tsinghua perhaps, to develop a sister facility here in China that will commercialize and share in the discoveries," Mello said in a speech to students. "We're hoping that we can forge a real, meaningful alliance where Tsinghua and UMass would team up to develop RNAi therapeutics and develop new technology around RNAi, and maybe share intellectual property as well."