Tag: Research

Microsoft Debates What to Do With A.I. Lab in China

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When Microsoft opened an advanced research lab in Beijing in 1998, it was a time of optimism about technology and China. The company hired hundreds of researchers for the lab, which pioneered Microsoft’s work in speech, image and facial recognition and the kind of artificial intelligence that later gave rise to online chatbots like ChatGPT. The Beijing operation eventually became one of the most important A.I. labs in the world. Bill Gates, Microsoft’s co-founder, called it an opportunity to tap China’s “deep pool of intellectual talent.” But as tensions between…

Academic paper based on Uyghur genetic data retracted over ethical concerns

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Concerns have been raised that academic publishers may not be doing enough to vet the ethical standards of research they publish, after a paper based on genetic data from China’s Uyghur population was retracted and questions were raised about several others including one that is currently published by Oxford University Press. In June, Elsevier, a Dutch academic publisher, retracted an article entitled “Analysis of Uyghur and Kazakh populations using the Precision ID Ancestry Panel” that had been published in 2019. The study by Chinese and Danish researchers used blood and…

Florida Law Chills Chinese Student Recruitment

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The panic among faculty at the University of Florida began this month once word started to spread: Do not make offers yet to graduate students from seven “countries of concern.” Among the seven was China, the largest source of international students at Florida, a major research university, particularly in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The guidance stemmed from a new law that Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, a Republican, and state lawmakers said was designed to prevent the Chinese Communist Party from having influence at the state’s…

Scientists Have Found a Hot Spot on the Moon’s Far Side

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The rocks beneath an ancient volcano on the moon’s far side remain surprisingly warm, scientists have revealed using data from orbiting Chinese spacecraft. They point to a large slab of granite that solidified from magma in the geological plumbing beneath what is known as the Compton-Belkovich Volcanic Complex. “I would say we’re putting the nail in the coffin of this really is a volcanic feature,” said Matthew Siegler, a scientist at the Planetary Science Institute, headquartered in Tucson, Ariz., and who led the research. “But then what’s interesting is, it’s…

China overtakes US in contributions to nature and science journals

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China has overtaken the US to become the biggest contributor to nature-science journals, in a sign of the country’s growing influence in the world of academic research. The Nature Index, which tracks data on author affiliations in 82 high quality journals, found that authors affiliated with Chinese institutions are more prolific than their US counterparts in physical sciences, chemistry, Earth and environmental sciences. The only category in which the US is still in the lead is life sciences. The finding comes from a snapshot of the Nature Index’s data taken…

Kiel-Qingdao Sister City Plan Stalled Amid German Wariness of China

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City officials in the northern German port of Kiel were flattered this year when the Chinese port of Qingdao — about 40 times its size — proposed partnering up as a sister city. They rushed to embrace the offer. The two cities had a history of cooperation dating to when the Germans helped their Chinese counterparts develop a sailing venue for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. Both have substantial commercial ports, sprawling boardwalks and public beaches. It seemed a good match. Almost too good, in fact, for security experts, who noted…

Scientist Revisits Data on Raccoon Dogs and Covid, Stressing the Unknowns

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A new study of genetic data from a market in Wuhan, China, said the data did not support the case that the pandemic had started with illegally traded animals, touching off fresh debate about samples that other scientists see as critical pieces of the puzzle of how the coronavirus reached humans. The new study, which examined the relative amounts of animal and viral material in swabs taken from surfaces at the market in early 2020, said it was difficult to draw conclusions about whether given samples of the virus had…

Charles Lieber, Ex-Harvard Professor, Sentenced in China Ties Case

Chin@Strategy

Background Dr. Lieber, now 64, had been chairman of Harvard’s chemistry and chemical biology department. For his work on nanotechnology, he had been seen by some as a contender for the Nobel Prize. Since 2008, prosecutors said, his laboratory at Harvard had received research grants totaling $18 million from the Department of Defense and the National Institutes of Health. But he also secretly accepted money from China, which had established a government initiative, the Thousand Talents program, to gain access to scientific knowledge and expertise, often paying scientists lavishly. When…

Chinese Censorship Is Quietly Rewriting the Covid-19 Story

Chin@Strategy

Early in 2020, on the same day that a frightening new illness officially got the name Covid-19, a team of scientists from the United States and China released critical data showing how quickly the virus was spreading, and who was dying. The study was cited in health warnings around the world and appeared to be a model of international collaboration in a moment of crisis. Within days, though, the researchers quietly withdrew the paper, which was replaced online by a message telling scientists not to cite it. A few observers…

New data links Covid-19’s origins to raccoon dogs at Wuhan market

Chin@Strategy

Newly released genetic data gathered from a live food market in Wuhan has linked Covid-19 with raccoon dogs, adding weight to the theory that infected animals sold at the site started the coronavirus pandemic, researchers involved in the work say. Swabs collected from stalls at the Huanan seafood market in the two months after it was shut down on 1 January 2020 were previously found to contain both Covid and human DNA. When the findings were published last year, Chinese researchers stated that the samples contained no animal DNA. That…