Day: January 18, 2026

Chinese nuclear scientists have developed a world-class “microscopic scalpel” essential to various forms of chipmaking, potentially unblocking a bottleneck in the country’s efforts to fortify key supply chains. The China Institute of Atomic Energy said on Saturday that it had developed the nation’s first high-energy hydrogen ion implanter called the POWER-750H, saying it performed on a par with advanced international standards. Ion implanters are a critical part of some forms of semiconductor manufacturing, accelerating ions to embed them in silicon wafers. Advertisement “For a long time, China had relied entirely…

The latest developments in Venezuela are interpreted as part of a broader US strategy to secure access to major oil resources. They are much more than that: the US raid signals a transformation in the global economy wherein a country’s power is increasingly determined not by its political actions, but by its capacity to embed resource wealth within a self-sustaining production system. These deeper processes did not begin today, but rather around 2008-2009 when, according to an integrated national power index developed by the Russian Academy of Sciences, China overtook…

A tiny but destructive invader is threatening South America, and Uruguay’s iconic palm trees are on the front line. Since 2022, the National Emergency System in coordination with agricultural agencies and with operational support from the air force, has struggled to contain the red palm weevil outbreak, prompting them to call scientists to help. Experts from the Technological University of Uruguay (UTEC) stepped in with an innovative detection strategy using drones and aerial imaging, but recognising the limits of domestic resources, they turned to a distant ally: China. Advertisement Rhynchophorus…

Specialised data sets can make AI services more helpful to vulnerable users who have become progressively reliant on them for emotional support and health assistance, according to Lu Shiyu, a senior researcher at Tencent Research Institute (TRI). Since 2024, Lu’s team at TRI – the public strategy research unit of Shenzhen-based Tencent – has been developing specialised data sets with vulnerable users in mind. Data sets, such as the entire internet, equip large language models (LLMs) with general knowledge in the pre-training phase, before being fine-tuned in the post-training phase…

The deployment was “a routine flight training in the airspace around China’s Dongsha Island, which was completely legitimate and lawful”, the PLA Southern Theatre Command, which oversees the South China Sea, said in a statement on Saturday. It came hours after the Taiwanese defence ministry reported that a PLA surveillance drone had entered the airspace of Pratas, also known as Dongsha in mainland China and Tungsha in Taiwan, at 5.44am and remained in the area for four minutes. Advertisement It described the move as a “highly provocative and irresponsible” act…