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When Ulji sold his beloved jeep that was used in herding and spent the money on saplings and herb seeds, his father flew into a rage and shouted at him; “We are herdsmen, herding is what we do.”

But Ulji never regretted his actions. In 2001, he put all he had on planting cistanche, a kind of herb that has a symbiotic relationship with the desert plant, saxaul. Most people in his township, Tengeli’elisi on the verge of Tenger Desert in Inner Mongolia, have never heard of cistanche.

Cistanche is a herb used in Chinese medicine. Saxaul is effective against impeding erosion, but without its symbiant Cistanche, there is no monetary gain in growing it.

Ulji began to grow cistanche in saxaul in 2003 and harvested the first cistanche in 2006. He couldn’t wait to show it to his parents, who still had no idea how much money the humble potato-like plant would provide for the family.

In May of 2006, Ulji sold half a packet of cistanche for 3,000 yuan (440 U.S. dollars), equal to the average annual income per capita in the town. And in the spring of 2008, the family earned more than 10,000 yuan just from cistanche.

So far, Ulji has planted saxaul on 24 hectares of desert and fruit trees on 21 other hectares, making a small oasis in the fourth-largest desert in China.

By planting saxaul and cistanche, the environment in parts of Inner Mongolia has greatly improved.

Zhang Jianjun, a 33-year-old vendor in a small town called Bayangaole near the Ulan Buh desert, still remembers how his family had to move five times because of desert expansion a decade ago.

“The days when we can’t walk with eyes open has become old memories. Every time we moved before, the sand buried our house,” Zhang said.

The family has not moved since 1999 after the Dengkou County that administers Bayangaole invested heavily in growing saxaul. Now the county has planted 20,000 hectares of saxaul and inoculated cistanches on 2,000 hectares.

To combat desertification, Saxaul-cistanche shrubs are spread on the vast deserts of west China.

Saxaul-cistanche shrubs also serve as wind barriers on the singular road that runs through Tarim desert in northwest China’s Xinjiang. The cistanche-rich barriers generate 9 million yuan revenue a year, enough to cover the road’s maintenance.

Saxaul, a small, bushy tree of 1 to 4 meters high, has an 80 percent chance of surviving the drought barren deserts. The plant has a strong root that can reach deeper than 10 meters down into the ground and hold the sands firmly. And its lush needle-point leaves slow down the wind.

It once faced extinctions as herdsman would overharvest the plant, digging it up by the roots.

But the situation began to change as Chinese began to artificially cultivate cistanche.

On the slender tendrils of saxaul’s root lives cistanche, often called the ginseng of the desert.

As a treasured traditional Chinese herb, it has been used to treat senile dementia, constipation, E.D. and infertility. It is also believed to boost immunity, improve memory and delay aging.

Every hecatre of saxaul grown with cistanche can yield 150,000 yuan worth of cistanche products, in addition to the desertification control benefits, said Tu Pengfei, a scholar from Peking University’s Modern Research Center for Traditional Chinese Medicine.

The cistanche and saxaul combination is an ideal way to combat desertification compared with growing grass and trees, said TU.

Grass patches have to be replaced from time-to-time and only have effects in the short-term, and tree-planting projects usually end when funds run out.

The locals take more personal initiatives in planting profitable herbs like cistanche to prevent desertification, said Xia Ri, president of

Inner Mongolia Sand and Herbs Industry Association.

“And it helps ecology, economy and social well-being.” Xia added.

Jia Zhibang, Chief of China Forestry Administration said 18.11 percent of China, or 174 million hectares, is desert.

China suffers an annual direct economic loss of 54 billion yuan from desertification that affects the life of nearly 400 million people.

China’s desert area has been shrinking at the rate of 128,300 hectares a year, a U-turn from the annual expansion of 343,600 hectares before the end of the 20th century.

The number of the militant group Abu Sayyaf members in the southern Philippine province of Sulu has dwindled to just about 70, primarily because of the group’s failure to generate ransom from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) kidnapping crisis, a senior military official said on Tuesday.

“Our latest count is that the group has only about 70 (members)from 200 because many of them deserted,” Maj. Gen. Juancho Sabban, commander of the military Joint Task Force Comet in Sulu told a radio interview.

Sabban said the Abu Sayyaf has demanded as much as 100 million pesos (about 2 million U.S. dollars) ransom for the ICRC hostages but the group never got anything, prompting many of its members, who were motivated by promise of money, to leave.

“Every time there is kidnapping, their group become bigger because of the promise of money after the ransom is paid,” said Sabban, without saying what was the strength of the Abu Sayyaf prior to the Jan. 15 kidnapping of the three ICRC members.

Filipina Mary Jean Lacaba was released by the group April 2 while Swiss Andreas Notter escaped 16 days later. On the other hand, the third hostage, Italian Eugenio Vagni, was released by the bandits last Sunday dawn.

“But as you can see, it has been six months and nothing was paid to them and this happened also to Gracia Burnham. If you ignore them, you do pay ransom, they are going to disappear slowly,” the official said.

“You know these (Abu Sayyaf) leaders, they promise huge amount of money which they will get from the ransom. But when we do not give in to them to pay ransom, their members slowly leave and many of them are with us now,” said Sabban.

On reports that the release of Vagni was a product of prisoner swap, Sabban insisted that it was due to military pressure and negotiations. He noted that for the three weeks before the release, they have recorded four major encounters with the Abu Sayyaf.

“For the past three weeks, we are really determined in our operations against them. For the past three weeks, four major encounters have taken place,” said Sabban.

It was in those encounters where the “favorite son” of Abu Sayyaf leader Dr. Abu; two brothers of sub-leader Albader Parad; and a member of the Jemaah Islamiyah, who he declined to name, died.

“Those major encounters forced them (Abu Sayyaf leaders) to call us. At first, they were asking 100 million pesos and this was mentioned by, if I am right, one of the senators but that’s not acceptable to us. They are being pinned down and yet they are demanding ransom,” he said.

He said the military operations continued until the Abu Sayyaf perpetrated a bombing in Jolo town on July 7, killing two persons and wounding 24 others, prompting security forces to close the exit and entry points to Jolo.

In one of the checkpoints, government forces intercepted six suspected Abu Sayyaf members, including the two wives of Albader Parad, because their motorcycles were not registered. The military initially linked the six to the bombing and one of the Parad’s wives to the ICRC kidnapping.

“Their motorcycles were unregistered so we have reason to hold them,” said Sabban, adding Parad later called them, crying.

“His request is to talk to his wives and we let them talk. But before that, we were talking about development, what benefits their families would get if they go down and end this violence in Sulu…That contributed to what happened and finally the release of Vagni,” he said.

One of the wives of Parad was delivered by Sahidulla to the Abu Sayyaf sub-leader on Saturday afternoon. The second was released on Sunday morning, hours after Vagni was released.

On the new offensive ordered by Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr against the Abu Sayyaf, Sabban said they can accomplish this. He also said that since the kidnapping, 10 soldiers have died as against the 36 confirmed fatalities of the side of the kidnappers.

World No. 1 Dinara Safina of Russia breezed past Italian Maria Elena Camerin 6-3, 6-0 to reach the Slovenia Open semifinals in Portoroz on Friday.

Safina will next take on Italy’s Alberta Brianti, who beat France’s Camille Pin 6-3 6-2.

Swiss Stefanie Voegele eliminated Rossana De Los Rios of Paraguay 6-1, 6-1. Defending champion Sara Errani of Italy crushed Croatia’s Petra Martic 6-1, 6-1 and will meet Voegele.

Chen Yunlin, president of the mainland’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) said Saturday that the ARATS will offer more support to help Taiwan businessmen weather through the financial crisis.

Chen said this at a symposium here Saturday on the development of Taiwan companies amid the financial crisis.

According to the Taipei World Trade Center, the second purchase delegation from the mainland had shown intention to purchase more than 600 million U.S. dollars worth of goods from Taiwan companies in the coming 12 months during a weeklong visit to the island, mainly involving food, drinks, garments and daily necessities.

“Under the current circumstances, we should positively seek more cooperation opportunities to overcome the hardships,” said Chiang Pin-kung, chairman of Taiwan-based Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF).

The mainland will send the third procurement delegation to the island in August, focusing on the island’s chemical industry, electronic products and automobiles.

More than 50 representatives from the mainland-based Association of Taiwan Investment Enterprises, the Taiwan-based “Chinese National Federation of Industries” and other organizations attended the symposium, which was jointly held by the ARATS and the SEF.

A young man in east China’s Zhejiang Province has convinced locals by threading a needle in his mouth, reported local newspaper, Yangtze Evening News.

The man, named Huang Zhong, living in the city of Gao You, is able to complete the stunt 24 times in less than 20 seconds only by his teeth and tongue.

Huang, once a tailor at a local factory, succeeded in doing the incredible stunt for the first time by accident years ago when betted with friends at a dinner.

He is now good at the skill thanks to the ceaseless effort over the past years, the report said.

Relief may be on the way for all those youngsters trembling at the thought of another needle jab. One day the flu vaccine may simply be placed under the tongue.

Korean researchers say the new vaccine worked in mice, avoiding not only the painful prick but also the discomfort some people feel from the inhaled vaccine.

The team led by Dr. Mi-Na Kweon of the International Vaccine Institute in Seoul reported their findings in Monday’s online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Better ways of delivering vaccine have long been under study, ranging from orally to inhaled, but all seem to have drawbacks.

Now, Kweon and colleagues say, two doses of influenza vaccine under the tongue of mice primed the animals’ immune system to fight off what would otherwise have been a deadly dose of flu.

Next, they are turning their attention to people, to see if the under-the-tongue vaccine also prompts a strong immune response.

Placing a couple of drops of liquid under the tongue gets the vaccine directly to mucus membranes and prompts a response both in mucus tissues throughout the body as well as in the immune system itself, the researchers said.

“These studies provide a basis for further human testing of this alternative form of needle-free vaccination. Aside from its convenience, sublingual vaccination appears to disseminate immunity to a broader range of organs than the classical routes of injecting or ingesting vaccines,” said Dr. Cecil Czerkinsky, deputy director-general for laboratory science at the Institute.

“If these findings are replicated in humans, they could pave the way for the development of a new generation of vaccines that could be used for mass vaccination against respiratory infections, including the pandemic avian-human influenza viruses,” he said in a statement.

Several research efforts applying vaccine to mucus membranes have been tried, seeking to avoid both the needle sticks that people dislike and the harsh environment of the digestive system that can damage or destroy a vaccine. Studies of under-the-tongue of other medicines have also been done.

Dr. William Schaffner of Vanderbilt University noted that recent flu studies have involved nasal sprays.

However, he said while he had expected people to be averse to needles, he was surprised to discover that “many people are averse to people messing with their nose … so there are limitations to nasal spray.”

So for researchers looking for another means of doing this, “just a drop under the tongue at least will protect mice … that’s a very exciting and promising line of investigation,” said Schaffner, who was not part of the research team.

And, he added, “if we were faced with a pandemic, the easier and more acceptable we can make the distribution of the vaccine the more rapidly we can protect a proportion of population.”

Kweon also said in mouse studies there is a theoretical possibility of a nasal spray reaching the central nervous system, which would not happen with the under-the-tongue vaccine.

The under-the-tongue vaccine worked whether it was a live or inactivated virus, Kweon reported. And, she added, it could also be flavored to make it more acceptable.

The research was funded by the governments of the Republic of Korea, Sweden and Kuwait.

South Korean researchers on Tuesday said they have discovered a new needle-free vaccination approach that may be safer to use and elicit a broader range of immune responses than conventional methods.

The Seoul-based International Vaccine Institute (IVI) said the novel approach calls for the administration of vaccines under the tongue, triggering immune responses in various mucosal tissues in the respiratory, digestive and reproductive tracts, which are major entry portals of pathogens into the body.

At present, most vaccines are given by needle shots into the bloodstream, with others being ingested or inhaled. Using needles, however, runs the risk of causing secondary infections in countries where medical conditions are poor.

Song Joo-hye and Kweon Mi-na, who led the research effort, said the “sublingual” administration of a flu vaccine on mice showed the animals developing a robust immune response in their lungs, and they were fully protected when they were later exposed to a severe form of influenza virus.

“Test results suggest that this method of vaccine administration poses no risk of antigen redirection to the central nervous system, which is a potential risk of giving influenza drugs intranasally,” said Kweon.

The IVI, established in 1997 as a United Nations Development Program initiative devoted to the development of new vaccines to help the world’s poorest people, said the findings were published in the latest issue of the US-based Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Cecil Czerkinsky, IVI deputy director for laboratory science, said that besides the convenience of giving vaccinations in this way, the new approach showed the potential for disseminating immunity to a broader range of organs compared to classical routes.

“If these findings can be replicated in humans, they could pave the way for the development of a new generation of vaccines that could be used for mass vaccinations against respiratory infections, including the pandemic avian-human influenza viruses,” the expert said.

The latest study, meanwhile, is a further development of joint research conducted with France’s National Institute for Health and Medical Research and Gothenburg University of Sweden.

The studies found that the sublingual approach overcomes drawbacks linked to oral administration of vaccines like degradation of antigens during their transit through the gastrointestinal tract, and failure to introduce strong immune responses in the respiratory tract.

Zoo keepers in southwest China’s Chongqing Municipality began implanting digital identification chips in animals on Tuesday to strengthen their management, the first such move in the country.

Three stitching-needle-sized chips, containing information about the animal’s name, age, gender, species, birth date and birthplace, blood type, and DNA, among others, were injected into the necks of an eight-year-old Siberian tiger, a seven-year-old African lioness and a five-year-old African lion raised at the Chongqing Zoo on Tuesday.

The chips, comprising a 64-bit code of binary numbers system, are radio frequency implants that are widely used worldwide to identify and manage animals, said Yin Yuzhong, the zoo’s deputy head.

“With such a chip, each animal owns a code exclusive to itself, in addition to its country and regional code. The digital ID chips will be helpful for the identification and management of animals, breeding control and epidemic prevention.”

Chips will be implanted into more than 120 animals that belong to 20 species raised in the Chongqing Zoo this year.

Chongqing Zoo is one of the largest in China with more than 4,000 animals of more than 230 species.

The Beijing Zoo will join Chongqing next month as the first two zoos in the country to launch such a program and help animals “go digital”.

Nationwide, all zoos are now required by the State Forestry Administration to implant digital ID chips in 17 species of animals this year. These included tigers, lions, elephants, giant panda, bears, golden monkeys, cranes and swans.

Beijing piloted the implanting program by putting similar digital chips in dogs last year to strengthen the management of its canine population, estimated at more than 1 million, and to curb the spread of rabies.

Xicheng District in downtown Beijing, where more than 10,000 dogs were registered, piloted the program before it was introduced to the rest of the city, according to the dog registration department of the local police authorities.

Any type of acupuncture may be effective treatment for chronic back pain, researchers say.

Researchers studied 638 adults who had never received acupuncture before. The patients were divided into four groups — those who received individualized acupuncture, those who received standardized acupuncture, those who received simulated acupuncture (without going through the skin), and those who received usual care (no acupuncture).

In the simulated acupuncture group, practitioners mimicked needle acupuncture by using a toothpick in a needle guide tube — poking at traditional pressure points without breaking the skin.

Participants received 10 treatments over seven weeks, at the end of which dysfunction and symptom scores improved equally among the three treatment arms.

Also, medication use in all the acupuncture groups decreased immediately and over the next year. About two-thirds of patients were taking medication, mostly painkillers such as nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). By eight weeks, that had declined to 47 percent in the acupuncture groups and 59 percent in the usual-care group.

But the real surprise was that acupuncture was effective even when the treatment didn’t break the skin. The investigators are not exactly sure why people found relief with the simulated acupuncture.

“Historically, some types of acupuncture have used non-penetrating needles. Such treatments may involve physiological effects that make a clinical difference,” Karen J. Sherman, Ph.D., M.P.H., co-author of the study was quoted as saying. “Maybe the context in which people get the treatment has effects that are more important than the mechanically-induced effects.”

A report of the study, funded by the National Center for complementary and Alternative Medicine — part of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, was published in the May 11 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.

Generally, a Chinese name should sound good and carry an auspicious connotation for it’s believed a baby’s name is connected with his or her destiny.

Yao Xue and her husband Wang Xiao, in their late 20s, have just experienced some of the difficulties involved in finding a name.

The couple, both graduates of a prestigious university, had a baby girl last October. After the first excitement, giving her a name became a priority for the whole family, including the four grandparents.

Initial discussions, with the six adults offering their own ideas from their own knowledge and using dictionaries, ended without an agreement.

Then Yao recalls once testing her name on a numerology Website that said her name was problematic based on the calculating of her bazi, or “eight characters of her birth.”

“You have to survive a lot of difficulties to succeed in middle age; you will often quarrel with your husband; you will not be in a good mood in your old age …” the explanation reads.

According to the “Book of Change,” or the “I Ching,” which describes the system of cosmology and philosophy that is intrinsic to ancient Chinese cultural beliefs, the eight characters are in four pairs denoting the time, date, month and year of a person’s birth.

Each pair is represented by one Heaven Stem and one Earth Branch, ancient measurements of time. And each character has its associated polarity - yin and yang, and the five elements - gold, wood, water, fire and earth.

Yao is afraid that someday her daughter would do the same thing as she did - test her name on a numerology Website. “It would have a bad effect on her if the result was not desirable, ” Yao says.

So Yao went to a friend’s father, an amateur “I Ching” enthusiast for help. Yao was told her baby lacked “fire” in her bazi. It’s normally difficult for a person to have all five elements, but a name can make up for deficiencies.

She took the suggestion of adding “fire” to her daughter’s name. Yao and her husband enlarged the naming team to more than 20, including friends and relatives. There was still no agreement.

Professor Wang Daliang, from China Youth University for Political Sciences and an expert on names, says that “increasingly young couples pin more hope on children’s names, as they are single-child parents themselves, and their babies are mostly only-children.”