China, the United States and Russia began Monday a global network for scientific research, the first of its kind in the North Hemisphere connecting major scientific centers such as Chicago, Moscow and Beijing.  

Experts with the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the Chinese sponsor of the trilateral project, said the Global Ring Network for Advanced Applications Development (Gloriad) is expected to be an important platform for research for the Next Generation Internet (NGI).

Qian Hualin, chief coordinator of Gloriad, said that the new links enable research institutes in the three countries to communicate with each other and share scientific data, which might stimulate new advancement in basic research.

Gloriad is proposed as a 10-gigabit-per-second optical network around the Northern Hemisphere. The ring begins in Chicago at the Starlight facility, funded by the US National Science Foundation, crosses the Atlantic Ocean to the Netherlight facility in Amsterdam, continues to Moscow and the Russian science city of Novosibirsk, goes on to Beijing and Hong Kong, and then crosses the Pacific Ocean to complete the circuit in Chicago.

"It could be used for transmitting scientific data at high speed, which might not be imagined on commercial networks," said Qian who introduced the Internet into China in 1989 and helped realize the Chinese network infrastructure in 1994.

Qian estimated that basic research in many areas would benefit from Gloriad, such as natural disasters forecast, human genome mapping, exploration on outer space, earthquake monitoring, and high-energy physics.

"Chinese scientists are eager to exchange academic views and share scientific data with their overseas counterparts," said Qian, citing that Gloriad makes closer cooperation and concerted research much easier.

Gloriad was developed from a US-Russian program of Nauka Net, which provides Russian scientists access to the NGI in the United States. In reciprocity, American researchers could also be linked to high performance Internet service in Russia.

The CAS, China's top scientific research institution, also views Gloriad as a vital step toward a Chinese NGI, coded E-Science project, which is scheduled in 2006.

(Xinhua News Agency January 13, 2004)