News on China's scientific and technological development.

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tokenanalyst

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Alibaba DAMO Academy: AI autonomously discovers four new superconducting materials, which have been experimentally verified.​



On July 3, Alibaba DAMO Academy announced that its AI agent ElementsClaw, developed in collaboration with Renmin University of China, the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, and other institutions, has successfully discovered and experimentally verified four novel superconducting materials. The findings have been published on the arXiv preprint platform.

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According to DAMO Academy, ElementsClaw adopts a "specialized-general-integrated" architecture: based on 125 million molecular and crystal structure data, it pre-trains a 1B-parameter atomic fundamental model, achieving an AUC of 0.996 for predicting superconductivity, with an average error of less than 1K in the critical temperature. The AI completed the screening of 2.4 million crystal structures in just 28 GPU hours, predicting 68,000 superconducting candidate materials. The team validated four materials, including Hf21Re25, Zr4VRe7, HfZrRe4, and Zr3ScRe8, with a critical temperature reaching up to 6.5K.

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Rong Yu, head of scientific intelligence at DAMO Academy, stated that these are the first superconducting materials discovered and validated by the AI agent, verifying the framework's potential in materials discovery. Huang Wenbing, associate professor at the Gaoling School of Artificial Intelligence, Renmin University of China, said that this AI agent is also expected to be applied to the discovery of new materials such as solid-state battery electrolytes and heterogeneous catalysts. DAMO Academy has already made its relevant prediction database available to researchers free of charge.

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PopularScience

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PopularScience said:
They overcame a global challenge in rocket manufacturing.

On May 18, 2026, a pivotal moment unfolded at the production facility of Tianjin HIT-Yongxing Technology Co., Ltd.: a thin aluminum alloy sheet—measuring 2.25 meters in diameter and just 4 millimeters in thickness—was formed in a single operation using cryogenic forming equipment. It was transformed into an integral tank bottom with a smooth, seamless surface, ready for direct installation without the need for further machining. This achievement marks a leap forward in my country's critical rocket structural manufacturing capabilities, establishing an internationally leading, third-generation technology for the integral manufacturing of tank bottoms.

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GulfLander

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Chinese scientists’ brain-mimicking chip ‘up to 478 times faster than Nvidia A100 GPU’​

New chip performs data storage and computation in a single memory array, enabling real-time modelling of complex brain structures, team says
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Chinese scientists say they have developed a tiny computer chip capable of modelling
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in real time.


According to its developers, this chip could not only transform diagnostics and treatment for conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease, but also boost the performance of brain-machine interfaces and assist surgeons.


Researchers from Peking University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences reported the breakthrough in a peer-reviewed study published in Science on Thursday, detailing a 40-nanometre memory chip with an integrated artificial neural network.


The device overcomes long-standing computational limits, enabling it to reconstruct complex brain surfaces in less than half a second – making it 50 to 478 times faster than state-of-the-art Nvidia A100 graphics processing unit (GPU) systems, according to the team.
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Lead author Yang Yuchao, a professor at Peking University’s school of integrated circuits and deputy dean for its school of electronic and computer engineering, told state-run Guangming Daily that the chip could accurately render the brain’s folds for medical applications.


“This breakthrough opens up new possibilities for brain-computer interfaces and the diagnosis and treatment of brain diseases,” he said. “In the future, personalised and dynamic digital brain twins will become possible.”
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“It also provides a hardware foundation that can operate in real time for intraoperative neuronavigation [a navigation system for surgery], early screening for Alzheimer’s disease and personalised interventions,” Yang added.
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The Chinese team solved this by integrating a neural dynamical system into a computing-in-memory architecture. This design performs data storage and computation within the same memory array.


They took a major flaw in phase-change memristors or next-generation memory chips – a glitch called “conductance drift” that usually makes data unstable – and turned it into a powerful tool for computing.


In an accompanying analysis in Science, two researchers at the Juelich Research Centre in Germany, who were not involved in the study, described performing data storage and computation in the same memory array as “analogous to processing raw milk on a dairy farm instead of transferring it to a factory”.
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“The platform can perform high-fidelity calculation with a millisecond-scale latency, establishing a pathway toward real-time computation in clinical imaging, robotics and embodied intelligence,” they added.


“The reduction in latency demonstrated by [the research team] establishes a new hardware paradigm for topology-preserving neural dynamical computation, which could enable real-time cortical surface tracking during neurosurgery and could be integrated into clinical decision-making.”
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sunnymaxi

sunnymaxi

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Renowned neurobiologist and former taekwondo captain Chih-Ying Su leaves US for China

Celebrated
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Chih-Ying Su, who specialises in research on the sense of smell using fruit flies and mosquitoes, has left her position as faculty vice-chair at the University of California San Diego to join the Shenzhen Academy of Medical Sciences (SMART).

The
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appointment as a full-time senior investigator was confirmed by SMART on July 2.
Professor Su’s lab focuses on how olfactory receptor neurons (ORNs) process odour information, as these neurons are the primary source of sensory input.

Her research findings have been published in leading journals in international neuroscience and biology, including Nature, Neuron, Nature Communications and PNAS.

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manqiangrexue

manqiangrexue

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sunnymaxi said:
Renowned neurobiologist and former taekwondo captain Chih-Ying Su leaves US for China

Celebrated
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Chih-Ying Su, who specialises in research on the sense of smell using fruit flies and mosquitoes, has left her position as faculty vice-chair at the University of California San Diego to join the Shenzhen Academy of Medical Sciences (SMART).

The
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appointment as a full-time senior investigator was confirmed by SMART on July 2.
Professor Su’s lab focuses on how olfactory receptor neurons (ORNs) process odour information, as these neurons are the primary source of sensory input.

Her research findings have been published in leading journals in international neuroscience and biology, including Nature, Neuron, Nature Communications and PNAS.

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I chuckled at the Taekwondo captain bit. Like, how's a 50 year old scientist's Taekwondo skills pertinent?
 
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