The Science and Technology Journalists’ Club on December 30 announced Vietnam’s top 10 science and technology events in 2009.

1. The Communist Party of Vietnam’s (CPV) Politburo’s conclusion on the report reviewing the implementation of the Party Central Committee’s Resolution 2 (the eighth tenure) on science and technology tasks and solutions, to develop science and technology from now until 2020.

The social sciences and humanities have made important contributions to creatively amending and developing the Marxism-Leninism and the Ho Chi Minh Thought in the present context.

Science and technology have created changes in productivity, quality and effectiveness in production and increased products’ competitiveness.

2. The National Assembly passed a resolution on the nuclear power project in the central province of Ninh Thuan at the sixth session of the 12th legislature on December 25.

The project will include two plants, each with two turbine groups and a capacity of 2,000 MW.

Work on the Ninh Thuan 1 nuclear power plant will begin in 2014 and the first turbine is expected to be in operation by 2020.

3. The Ho Chi Minh City Pasteur Institute has produced the first batch of A/H1N1 vaccine after five months of tests. The vaccine proved its efficiency and safety after clinical tests on animal.

4. According to a study on rising sea levels and climate change, by the end of the 21st century, the country’s temperature may rise by 2.3 degrees Celsius compared to the average level recorded from 1980-1999. By the middle of the 21st century, sea levels will rise by an additional 74 cm from those reported between 1980 and 1999.

5. Since October, VinaPhone became the first mobile phone service provider offering mobile information services using 3G technology to customers.

6. Ping-pong playing robot TOPIO, a product of TOSY toy joint stock company, attracted people’s attention at the International Robot Exhibition in Tokyo , Japan .

7. The ENVISAT satellite image station, which will process geographical satellite images, officially operated on July 9, 2009. Vietnam became the first Asian nation capable of receiving ENVISAT (Environmental Satellite) images.

8. A total of 651 science and technology businesses from ASEAN countries and China, Japan and the Republic of Korea (RoK) took part in the conference Techmart Viet Nam ASEAN + 3. More than 2,000 economic contracts and memoranda of understanding worth over 1.7 trillion VND were signed at the event.

9. Vietnamese professor Ngo Bao Chau has been honoured by US-based Time magazine as author of one of the 10 scientific discoveries of the world in 2009.

Chau, 37, who currently works at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton and is also a professor of the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology’s Institute of Mathematics . Chau and Prof. Gerald Laumon formulated an ingenious proof of a fundamental lemma in Langlands Programme proposed by the Canadian-American mathematician Robert Langlands 30 years ago.

10. An original royal edict from the Nguyen dynasty referring to the Hoang Sa (Paracel) archipelago was discovered in the records of the Dang family in An Hai commune, Ly Son island district of the central province of Quang Ngai on March 31.

King Minh Mang promulgated the edict to send three boats and 24 seamen to defend Hoang Sa in 1835. (VNA)