66 h. ago Chinese scientist detained, an ancient DNA discovery: 7 science highlights

We have put together stories from our coverage on science from the past two weeks to help you stay informed. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing. 1. China’s new tech war warriors: PhD graduates without a thesis China’s top defence university is piloting a scheme that allows PhD students to graduate with a product or design instead of a thesis in an effort to solve “bottleneck” engineering problems amid the tech race with the United States. 2. Chief...

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4 d. ago Chinese scientist who smuggled dangerous ‘vomitoxin’ fungus into US has been deported

Chinese scientist who smuggled dangerous ‘vomitoxin’ fungus into US has been deported  New York Post

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4 d. ago Chinese scientist who smuggled dangerous ‘vomitoxin’ fungus into US deported

Chinese scientist who smuggled dangerous ‘vomitoxin’ fungus into US deported  New York Post

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5 d. ago China’s new secret weapon in biotech race: Tibet animal poop with stranger germ

Hidden in the frozen highlands of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau – often called the “Third Pole” – lies an unexpected trove of biological innovation: animal poop. Chinese scientists have discovered that the faeces of yaks, Tibetan sheep, antelope and other native herbivores harbour thousands of previously unknown microbial species, some of which could be game changers for biotechnology. They include novel strains that have the potential to degrade cellulose – used for paper, cardboard and clothing –...

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5 d. ago China’s new secret weapon in biotech race: Tibet animal poop with newfound germs

Hidden in the frozen highlands of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau – often called the “Third Pole” – lies an unexpected trove of biological innovation: animal poop. Chinese scientists have discovered that the faeces of yaks, Tibetan sheep, antelope and other native herbivores harbour thousands of previously unknown microbial species, some of which could be game changers for biotechnology. They include novel strains that have the potential to degrade cellulose – used for paper, cardboard and clothing –...

Events

7 d. ago Chinese scientists create super stable building block for quantum computers

Chinese physicist Pan Jianwei and his team have created a “quantum Lego block” that refuses to fall apart – even when shaken. Using a programmable quantum processor named Zuchongzhi 2, Pan’s team has simulated an exotic new state of matter where quantum effects are locked into the corners of a material, according to a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Science on Friday. These corner states are protected by the deep laws of topology – a kind of quantum armour against errors and...

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9 d. ago AI scaling hasn’t reached a dead end yet, Chinese Google scientist says

There remains considerable potential to enhance artificial intelligence models by scaling up computing power and data, according to Yao Shunyu, a senior research scientist at Google DeepMind and former researcher at US AI start-up Anthropic. Amid heated discussions in the AI community about the future of scaling – the process of increasing computational resources and training data to develop better AI models – Yao said the method was still expected to yield results for at least a year “until we...

Events

1 week ago Short bursts of oxygen deprivation could help treat depression: Chinese study

Brief, controlled bouts of oxygen deprivation – essentially moments of safe suffocation – can alleviate severe depression as effectively as electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) and ketamine, two of the most powerful treatments known to psychiatry, Chinese scientists have concluded. This radical new approach, called acute intermittent hypoxia, harnesses a natural mechanism triggered by a temporary drop in oxygen in the brain and activates a naturally occurring compound known as adenosine, which acts...

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1 week ago Chinese team cuts laser weapon, EV part production time from 1 hour to 1 second

Chinese scientists have reduced the production time of dielectric energy storage capacitor components to just one second, enabling scalable, temperature-stable storage for hybrid electric vehicles, radar systems and high-power lasers. Unlike other methods that can take from three minutes to an hour depending on the product quality, the team’s flash annealing technique heats and cools at a rate of 1,000 degrees Celsius per second, allowing for rapid synthesis of crystal films on a silicon wafer...

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2 w. ago Lithography breakthrough: China creates 14nm chip with compact EUV light source

Chinese scientists and engineers are shrinking one of the most complex and expensive technologies in modern chipmaking down to desktop size and using it to manufacture 14-nanometre chips. While 14nm chips no longer represent the cutting edge – commercial foundries have already pushed into the 3nm realm – they remain a sweet spot for performance, cost and efficiency, powering everything from industrial automation to electric vehicles and smart wearables. At the UltrafastX academic conference in...

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2 w. ago Hong Kong PolyU’s top AI expert Yang Hongxia eyes ‘last mile of generative AI’

Chinese artificial intelligence scientist Yang Hongxia, a professor at Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU), is seeking to democratise large language models (LLMs) by empowering hospitals and various enterprises to train their own AI systems. Yang, who previously worked on AI models at ByteDance and Alibaba Group Holding’s Damo Academy, said in a recent interview with the South China Morning Post that her newly formed start-up, InfiX.ai, envisioned a world in which various businesses could...

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2 w. ago China’s ‘coal plastic’ breakthrough can greatly reduce its demand for oil: study

Chinese scientists have developed a catalyst that can turn biomass and coal-derived syngas directly into building blocks for plastic and synthetic rubber with higher efficiency and sustainability than existing methods. The iron-based nanoparticle catalyst converts syngas, or synthesis gas, into hydrogen and carbon-based compounds called olefins by coupling two reactions that separately have limitations but together have synergistic effects. This process produces olefins with a large variety of...

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2 w. ago Hong Kong: How the Mecca of Chinese capitalism is attracting top Western scientists

Hong Kong: How the Mecca of Chinese capitalism is attracting top Western scientists  EL PAÍS English

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2 w. ago Chinese team finds ‘iron rust’ in lunar soil, challenging moon surface myths

Chinese scientists have identified micron-sized grains of “iron rust” in lunar soil samples brought back by the Chang’e-6 mission last year. This finding challenges the traditional understanding of the moon’s surface chemistry and offers new clues to explain lunar magnetic anomalies. The results were published on Friday in the peer-reviewed journal Science Advances. A research team from Shandong University, in collaboration with the Institute of Geochemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences...

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3 w. ago China’s rare earths breakthrough, Fujian carrier’s naval genius: 7 highlights

We have selected seven stories from this week’s news across Hong Kong, mainland China, the wider Asia region and beyond that resonated with our readers and shed light on topical issues. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing. 1. In world first, Chinese scientists find rare earth minerals from a living plant A Chinese-led team of scientists says it has found a naturally formed mineral with rare earth elements in a fern, a world first that offers a “green...

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3 w. ago How Chinese scientists turned a giant kite into a flying power plant

China has successfully deployed the world’s largest power-generating kite, capable of harnessing the potential of energy-dense, high-altitude winds to provide cheaper power than traditional surface turbines. The 5,000 square-metre (53,820 square-foot) high-altitude wind power capture kite was unfurled at a test site at Alxa Left Banner in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region on Wednesday, according to state broadcaster CCTV. Resembling a parachute, the power-generating kite was developed by the...

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3 w. ago Chinese scientist pleads guilty in US toxic fungus smuggling case

A Chinese scientist charged in Michigan with smuggling biological materials pleaded guilty on Wednesday but was given no additional time in jail beyond the five months she already spent in custody. Jian Yunqing, who was a temporary researcher at a University of Michigan lab, will be released and quickly deported. A judge called it a “very strange” case involving an “incredibly accomplished researcher”. Jian, 33, was arrested in June and accused of conspiring with a boyfriend to study and nurse a...

Events

3 w. ago Chinese scientist pleads guilty in U.S. smuggling case and will be quickly deported

Chinese scientist pleads guilty in U.S. smuggling case and will be quickly deported  The Detroit News

Science

3 w. ago Chinese team reports first recovery of rare earth minerals from living plant

A Chinese-led team of scientists says it has found a naturally formed mineral with rare earth elements in a fern, a world first that offers a “green circular model” for extracting high-value rare earths, according to an institution behind the study. The researchers said the discovery of nanoscale monazite in a living plant “opens new possibilities for the direct recovery of functional rare earth element materials”. “To our knowledge, this is the earliest reported occurrence of rare earth...

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3 w. ago In world first, Chinese scientists find rare earth minerals from a living plant

A Chinese-led team of scientists says it has found a naturally formed mineral with rare earth elements in a fern, a world first that offers a “green circular model” for extracting high-value rare earths, according to an institution behind the study. The researchers said the discovery of nanoscale monazite in a living plant “opens new possibilities for the direct recovery of functional rare earth element materials”. “To our knowledge, this is the earliest reported occurrence of rare earth...

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