27 h. ago Chinese team builds optical chip AI that is 100 times faster than Nvidia’s market leader

Chinese scientists have unveiled an optical computing chip that outperformed Nvidia’s leading AI hardware by over a hundredfold in speed and energy efficiency – particularly for generative tasks such as video production and image synthesis. The LightGen chip was developed by a team from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Tsinghua University, harnessing the speed of light to execute complex artificial intelligence workloads. With more than 2 million photonic neurons integrated into a compact chip,...

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69 h. ago How Chinese scientists turn annoying allergy cells into a powerful weapon against cancer

Chinese scientists have turned allergy into a powerful weapon against cancer to deliver drugs and turbocharge the body’s own immune attack on cancer. The team loaded mast cells – which cause allergic symptoms when they encounter antigens such as seafood and pollen – with anticancer drugs to deliver them into tumours. The researchers said they were working to swiftly transition the method to clinical application, including by exploring its potential combination with existing cancer...

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69 h. ago How Chinese scientists turn allergy cells into a powerful weapon against cancer

Chinese scientists have turned allergy into a powerful weapon against cancer to deliver drugs and turbocharge the body’s own immune attack on cancer. The team loaded mast cells – which cause allergic symptoms when they encounter antigens such as seafood and pollen – with anticancer drugs to deliver them into tumours. The researchers said they were working on clinical applications, including exploring its potential combination with existing cancer immunotherapies. The scientists from Zhejiang...

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69 h. ago How Chinese scientists turn allergy into a powerful weapon against cancer

How Chinese scientists turn allergy into a powerful weapon against cancer  South China Morning Post

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4 d. ago ‘No bomb does what this is doing’: Trump calls fentanyl a weapon of mass destruction

US President Donald Trump on Monday signed an executive order (EO) designating illicit fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid driving the US overdose crisis, as a weapon of mass destruction. The EO issued by the White House asserted that “Illicit fentanyl is closer to a chemical weapon than a narcotic” due to its extreme potency. “Two milligrams, an almost undetectable trace amount equivalent to 10 to 15 grains of table salt, constitutes a lethal dose”, it said. The order highlights the national...

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4 d. ago Trump calls fentanyl a weapon of mass destruction: ‘no bomb does what this is doing’

US President Donald Trump on Monday signed an executive order (EO) designating illicit fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid driving the US overdose crisis, as a weapon of mass destruction. The EO issued by the White House asserted that “illicit fentanyl is closer to a chemical weapon than a narcotic” due to its extreme potency. “Two milligrams, an almost undetectable trace amount equivalent to 10 to 15 grains of table salt, constitutes a lethal dose,” it said. The order highlights the national...

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4 d. ago Chinese expert calls for world models and safety standards for embodied AI

Andrew Yao Chi-chih, a world-renowned Chinese computer scientist, said embodied artificial intelligence still lacks key foundations, stressing the need for interpretable “world models” and more diverse data-collection methods. Speaking on Saturday at an industry event in Shanghai, Yao said core capabilities such as “reasoning, planning and control should ultimately be integrated within a unified framework”, noting the importance of world models instead of simulating. He added that “scalable new...

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7 d. ago Flood expert Xu Chongyu leaves Europe for China as climate change speeds up

For three decades, Xu Chongyu was Europe’s secret weapon against the rising tides. From his quiet office at the University of Oslo, his hydrological models have guarded cities from Copenhagen to Brussels, predicting floods before the first clouds formed. But the climate clock was ticking fast and his homeland needed him, so the Chinese-born scientist decided to leave. A homecoming ceremony was held for Xu on December 3 at North China University of Water Resources and Electric Power (NCWU) in...

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1 week ago Chinese team reports way to extract hypersonic weapon fuel boron from seawater

Scientists from Northwest A&F University in China have developed an innovative technology to extract and collect boron from seawater. Boron is a lightweight element used as solid fuel in scramjet engines on some advanced Chinese hypersonic weapons. Neodymium-iron-boron rare earth magnets – used extensively in industrial and military applications – have drawn particular attention amid ongoing trade tensions over critical minerals. These high-performance rare-earth magnets not only rely on...

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1 week ago Chinese scientists report way to extract hypersonic weapon fuel boron from seawater

Scientists from Northwest A&F University in China have developed an innovative technology to extract and collect boron from seawater. Boron is a lightweight element used as solid fuel in scramjet engines on some advanced Chinese hypersonic weapons. Neodymium-iron-boron rare earth magnets – used extensively in industrial and military applications – have drawn particular attention amid ongoing trade tensions over critical minerals. These high-performance rare-earth magnets not only rely on...

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1 week ago Hong Kong Legco election, potential Parkinson’s treatment: 5 weekend reads

We have put together stories from our coverage last weekend to help you stay informed about news across Asia and beyond. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing. 1. Hong Kong Legco election’s 31.9% turnout surpasses record low of 2021 2. Tokyo accuses Chinese fighters of locking on Japanese jets northeast of Taiwan 3. Chinese scientists develop promising stem cell therapy for Parkinson’s 4. The great slowdown: Germany at a standstill as ‘China shock’...

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1 week ago With one small step for AI, Chinese scientists make giant leap for humanity

Imagine a robot that could tie your shoelaces to the perfect degree of tightness, or a robotic hand capable of performing abdominal surgery and then suturing the wound with impeccable precision. You might assume these feats would rely on complex electronic sensors, and yet a breakthrough by Chinese scientists has made it possible for robots to rival the skill of experienced surgeons – even with their “eyes closed” – using just a simple knot. The achievement, by an interdisciplinary team from...

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1 week ago Chinese scientists develop promising stem cell therapy for Parkinson’s

Chinese medical experts have created an ultra-efficient stem cell approach to Parkinson’s disease, raising prospects for treatment for a condition for which there is no known cure. Parkinson’s disease is often referred to as a “movement disorder”. Its symptoms are caused by the brain failing to generate enough dopamine, due to the death or impairment of the neurons responsible for producing the chemical. While researchers around the world are exploring stem cell therapies to replenish lost...

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2 w. 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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2 w. 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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2 w. 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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2 w. 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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2 w. 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 –...

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3 w. 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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3 w. 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...

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