Two Ph.D. candidates and one graduate student from the elite China University of Science and Technology have set foot on the South Pole to join China's 18th expedition there.

Zhu Renbin, Liu Xiaodong and Wang Jianjun boarded the expedition ship "Xuelong" (Snow Dragon) in Shanghai and traveled the Pacific, Indian and Great Southern oceans before arriving in Antarctica.

They are scheduled to stay at the two polar research stations Great Wall and Zhongshan, and onboard of Xuelong ship for five months.

The China's leading tech-oriented university has sent scholars and students to join the 15th and 16th South Pole expedition and yielded significant results. Professor Sun Liguang with the university calculated the population trends of Antarctic penguins over the past 3,000 years by analyzing the deposits of penguin excrement. His findings were published in Nature magazine.

China's 18th Antarctic expedition team consists of 143 people, including the crew members. They will travel more than 20,000 nautical miles and are expected to return to Shanghai in early April 2002.

( November 27, 2001)