SHANGHAI, June 22 -- TWO university professors have been punished for plagiarizing other people's works, the National Natural Science Foundation of China has announced on its Website.

Professor Ai Yong, of the elite Wuhan University in central China's Hubei Province, was criticized by the foundation, which also canceled his research program on laser communications and revoked his funding.

The NSFC found that Ai had revised one of his undergraduate student's research reviews into a dissertation and had it published in 2005, listing himself as the second author.

Without conducting any research of his own, his article mainly derived from an essay published in the Proceedings of the International Society for Optical Engineering in 2003.

In the other case, Professor Zhang Lianshun, of the Tianjin-based Civil Aviation University of China, published an article that was a synthesis of two essays by other people.

Zhang claimed in the article that he was a member of a scientific research project on thermal spraying and welding funded by the NSFC. The claim, however, was a fabrication.