This month, recruitment of researchers will begin for one of China's first national labs, the National Laboratory of Protein Science. A few dozen top-notch biologists will receive generous contracts, access to top equipment, and protection from the vitality-sapping chase for research funding

Chinese and American researchers have redated bones and tools from the richest Homo erectus site in the world with a new radiometric method. In work published this week, they date the oldest human fossils to about 770,000 years ago, showing that H. erectus was able to survive mild glacial conditions at a northern site