Shanghai residents will soon find it easier to pursue their scientific interests, as the city authorities have decided to work to give the public wider access to local popular science education facilities.
Starting from the end of this month, a total of 114 such facilities will be opened fully to the public, which means that people will be able to access quite a number of unexplored places, especially university laboratories and research institutes, to extend their grasp of scientific knowledge, said city officials.
"We need to greatly expand our scope in promoting public knowledge of science," said Shen Jun, an official of the Shanghai Popular Science Education Base Association.
The involved places are expected to make their open facilities and materials much more readily accessible to the public, according to Shen.
Adding diversity of resources for scientific education, the expansion will enable local citizens to have closer encounter with rarely seen scientific developments, such as super computers, earthquake seismographs and robots with diversified functions.
"Even cutting-edge scientific technologies can be demonstrated to the public in simplified ways," Shen noted. "But the key point is that people should first know they can access such scientific facilities."
The Shanghai Science and Technology Commission is also considering setting up a special scientific education tourist route, the first of its kind in the city, by pushing cooperation between eight scientific education facilities and local travel agencies, according to Shen.
"We take promoting scientific knowledge among the public as our obligation, but people obviously know very little about the research we are doing," said Ge Yaojun, a researcher at the wind tunnel laboratory of Tongji University, one of the 114 scientific education facilities involved.
(China Daily August 12, 2002)
