BEIJING (Reuters) - China will tolerate experiment failures by its scientists to ease pressure, encourage innovation and cut the chances of fraud, a top official said on Thursday.

Worried about being left behind in global technological advances, China has launched a campaign to pour more resources into scientific research to boost "home-grown innovation."

Ken-ichi Horie, a 69 year old Japanese sailor, is planning a solo 4,350 mile trip from Hawaii to Japan using an innovative wave powered boat. If successful, the trip would earn him a Guinness record while simultaneously proving the viability of wave powered propulsion.

His boat, the Suntory Mermaid II, turns wave energy into thrust using two fins mounted beneath the bow. These fins move up and down with the waves and use them to generate “kicks” that propel the boat forward. Another green element of the journey: all of the radios and electrical equipment are solar powered.

HONG KONG (Reuters) - More than half a million Hong Kong schoolchildren stayed at home on Thursday after the government shut all kindergartens and primary schools for two weeks to contain an outbreak of flu.

A government-appointed panel of experts is investigating the deaths of three children, aged 2, 3 and 7, over the last two weeks. All three had flu-like symptoms.

DURHAM, N.C. — Though they perch far apart on the avian family tree, birds with the ability to learn songs use similar brain structures to sing their tunes. Neurobiologists at Duke University Medical Center now have an explanation for this puzzling likeness.

MADISON - The pending federal decision about whether to protect the polar bear as a threatened species is as much about climate science as it is about climate change.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) is currently considering a proposal to list the polar bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act, a proposal largely based on anticipated habitat loss in a warming Arctic.

2200 Japanese home owners draw their power and heat their hot water from hydrogen fuel cells. The technology, which extracts energy from the chemical reaction when hydrogen combines with oxygen to form water, is more commonly found as an application for automobiles rather than homes.

Developers claim that fuel cells cause one-third less of the pollution that causes global warming than conventional electricity generation does.

OLEDs are thin, organic materials sandwiched between two electrodes, which illuminate when an electrical charge is applied. They’re so thin, that they could be applied to rooms as a type of wall paper to glow at the touch of a finger or when someone enters the room. Like LEDs they produce light very efficiently.

JAKARTA (Reuters) - Foreign donors who have propped up Indonesia's fight against AIDS/HIV are poised to slash their funding programs, partly because they now consider Indonesia a middle-income country, officials said on Wednesday.

Infection rates in Indonesia are increasing rapidly among high-risk population groups, especially drug users and sex workers, and in the easternmost Papua region an AIDS epidemic has spread into the general population.

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Clarissa Poon was one of an estimated 50 million people who contracted mosquito-borne dengue fever last year. She spent an agonizing week on a drip in a Bangkok hospital as she battled the potentially deadly disease.

"There was not a single moment when I wasn't aching everywhere, dizzy and nauseous. I was so weak I couldn't even stand," said Poon, who caught the illness during a family holiday at a beach resort in Thailand.