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SCI & TECH3d agoHangzhou is doubling down on tech – minus the viral hypeA year ago, a Unitree robot kickboxing could light up social media. When DeepSeek released its latest open-source artificial intelligence (AI) model, developers around the world rushed to test it. This year, however, Hangzhou’s latest technology bets have barely made a ripple. The city’s “New Eight Steeds” – eight deep-tech companies in fields ranging from smart glasses and inference graphic processing units (GPUs) to compute-in-memory chips and space computing – are a very different proposition...South China Morning Post
SCI & TECH3d agoVideo shows rare albino Asian black bearA rare albino Asian black bear was captured on camera in China’s Shennongjia National ParkAl Jazeera [en]
SCI & TECH3d agoIn the Mekong Delta, a push to grow food with saltwaterFor generations, farming in Viet Nam’s Mekong Delta has depended on a delicate bargain. The river flooded, retreated and flooded again, carrying freshwater and sediment across a flat landscape whose vast fields helped turn the country into one of the world’s leading rice exporters. UN News
SCI & TECH3d agoChina unveils AI-powered robot designed to help farmers breed better strains of wheatChina has unveiled a smart robot prototype designed to assist with wheat breeding in the latest step in its ongoing drive to advance agricultural technology and bolster food security. The robot made its public debut at a recent seminar on wheat breeding, state-run China Science Daily reported on Friday. Traditional wheat breeders rely on a wealth of accumulated experience to identify and select strains with superior traits from tens of thousands of hybrid offspring. But this requires manual...South China Morning Post
SCI & TECH3d agoHow DNA ‘fingerprinting’ is keeping Malaysia’s green turtles safe from poachersAs dawn breaks on Mataking Island off Sabah’s east coast, a tiny green turtle crawls across the sand, driven by instinct towards the surf before disappearing into the ocean on a journey that could cover thousands of kilometres. Where it goes is impossible to know, but with a huge dose of luck on its epic travels, it may return to the same Malaysian beach decades later to lay eggs of its own. The hatchling is one of tens of thousands that emerge from Sabah’s beaches each year, as the species...South China Morning Post
SCI & TECH3d agoKansai Electric restarts reactor at Mihama nuclear plant in FukuiKansai Electric Power Co said Saturday that it has restarted the No. 3 reactor at the Mihama nuclear power plant in central Japan, after it was manually shut…Japan Today
SCI & TECH3d agoSpirit of Hong Kong Awards: explorer inspires youth through glacial field tripsWhen Wilson Cheung took Hong Kong secondary school students into the Swiss Alps this summer, terrain he had once been able to reach had become inaccessible. Glacier melt and thawing ground had destabilised parts of the mountain, while rockfall made fieldwork more hazardous. Only weeks earlier, Cheung had completed a roughly 1,700km (1,056-mile) scientific snowkite traverse across Greenland in 2026. The journey took him across the ice sheet while he continued collecting data in one of the world’s...South China Morning Post
SCI & TECH4d agoNew Taipei-Hong Kong subsea route opened to cut risk and meet AI demandOne of the world’s biggest network service providers has opened a new subsea route between Taipei and Hong Kong to strengthen the system against repeated underwater cable disruptions around the island. Britain-headquartered RETN said the new route would take its total to six serving Taiwan: four connecting Taipei and Hong Kong, and two linking Taipei and Tokyo. “Like many island economies, Taiwan’s international connectivity relies heavily on subsea cables, which creates exposure to risks such...South China Morning Post
SCI & TECH4d agoChild’s play? Southeast Asia takes on Big Tech to protect kids onlineIndonesia officially barred under-16s from using “high-risk” social media earlier this year. But that hasn’t stopped the son of one Jakarta-based writer from using it. Aged 14, he already had accounts on Instagram and TikTok – among the platforms Jakarta said children would be banned from using – as well as popular video game Minecraft and gaming platform Roblox. To register, he simply lied about his age. “He can access everything,” Inne Abidin said of her son. “His friends use everything...South China Morning Post
SCI & TECH4d agoThe US and China Cannot Slow the AI Race, But They Can Make It SaferThe United States does not need to trust China, share frontier models with China, or slow its own AI development to have a national security interest in AI safety cooperation.The Diplomat
SCI & TECH4d agoSpirit of Hong Kong Awards: scientist’s soybean research pushes agricultural frontierWhen Professor Lam Hon-ming returned to Hong Kong after completing postdoctoral work in the United States in 1997, he was fixated on one question: how can science help feed the country and the world? He found that soybeans offered part of the answer. In addition to its nutritional value, the crop can fix nitrogen levels in the soil, reducing reliance on chemical fertiliser, and some varieties can be bred to tolerate drought and salinity. Lam went on to spend almost three decades studying soybean...South China Morning Post
SCI & TECH4d agoSpirit of Hong Kong Awards: firm uses 3D-printed tiles to restore coral reefsIn 2014, a University of Hong Kong research team watched two years of reef restoration work collapse in Sai Kung. The Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department had asked the researchers to speed up coral recovery. Cement structures were placed on the seabed and coral began to grow. But as the colonies became larger, they became unstable. “They have no roots,” said Vriko Yu Pik-fan, then a doctoral student on the project. “The bigger they got, the less stable they were.” That failure...South China Morning Post
SCI & TECH5d agoFrom kitchen waste to sky-high costs: inside Hong Kong’s quest for green jet fuelChina’s once-notorious “gutter oil”, recycled from kitchen and drainage waste, has almost vanished from dining tables in recent years and now carries the nickname liquid gold. The substance has become a highly sought-after feedstock for producing clean energy, especially sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), with biofuel producers such as Hong Kong-based Ecoceres sourcing gutter oil across the Greater Bay Area. EcoCeres’ co-chairman, Alan Chan Ying-lung, witnessed how the restaurant waste transformed...South China Morning Post
SCI & TECH5d agoChina breakthrough projected to push sustainable jet fuel gross profit margin past 50%Chinese researchers have developed a catalyst that converts synthesis gas into sustainable jet fuel – an advance that could boost production, help meet net-zero carbon goals and yield a gross profit margin above 50 per cent. The team verified the efficacy of the chemical catalyst in a thousand-tonne pilot test and found that combining woody biomass-derived synthesis gas, or syngas, with the cobalt-manganese catalyst enabled the “highly efficient synthesis of jet fuel”. Based on a techno-economic...South China Morning Post
SCI & TECH5d agoHow America and China Compare on AIAnd why the two countries have different definitions of winning.Foreign Policy
SCI & TECH5d agoAriel Sujarchuk received an international award in South Korea for his management with artificial intelligenceThe mayor of Escobar was honored with the Seoul Smart City Prize 2026 in the Leadership category, during a ceremony held in the capital of South Korea. The jury highlighted the use of artificial intelligence, the digitization of procedures, and the innovation policies implemented in theClarín
SCI & TECH5d agoTiny turtles take their first steps towards the seaOn Mataking Island in Malaysia, conservationists raise and release green turtle hatchlings, part of long-running efforts that helped the species recover.EuroNews [en]
SCI & TECH5d agoScientists in Austria and China create the world’s first nuclear clocks. Here’s why it mattersThe new nuclear clocks measure time by using lasers to make subatomic particles.EuroNews [en]
SCI & TECH5d agoMINISFORUM Launches MS-S1 MAX-P495 with 192GB Unified Memory, Expanding Its Local AI Computing StrategySHENZHEN, China, Oct. 8, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- As Artificial Intelligence (AI) evolves toward Super Intelligence (SI), intelligent computing is entering a new phase—one in which increasingly capable AI is moving closer to endpoints and edge environments. This shift is accelerating demand for local large-model processing, data privacy, low-latency performance, and greater control over AI workloads. In response, MINISFORUM is advancing its Local AI strategy from high-performance AI systems toward scalable local computing platforms. The new MS-S1 MAX-P495 is the latest step in this evolution, bringing powerful local AI computing to the edge and helping bridge today's AI era with the emerging era of Super Intelligence. MINISFORUM MS-S1 MAX-P495 From 395 to P495: More Headroom for Local AI Following the MS-S1 MAX powered by the AMD Ryzen™ AI Max+ 395, MINISFORUM is introducing the MS-S1 MAX-P495, powered by the AMD Ryzen™ AI Max+ PRO 495. Built on the Zen 5 architecture, the processor features 16 cores and 32 threads, with clock speeds of up to 5.2GHz, and integrates Radeon™ 8065S Graphics. It delivers up to 55 TOPS of NPU performance and 131 TOPS of total AI compute, targeting AI enthusiasts, developers, geeks, and professional creators with higher demands for local high-performance computing. 192GB Unified Memory Keeps Larger Models Local Compared with the MS-S1 MAX powered by the Ryzen™ AI Max+ 395, the P495's key upgrades are focused on memory and VRAM capacity. Maximum unified memory increases from 128GB to 192GB, while maximum allocatable VRAM rises from 96GB to 160GB. The larger shared CPU-GPU memory pool further increases the scale of models that can be handled by a single system, providing more room for demanding local AI workloads. The MS-S1 MAX-P495 supports running 300B-class large language models locally. In model testing, DeepSeek V4 Flash 284B (Q4) ran on a single system at approximately 12 tok/s. This enables local inference, AI application development, multimodal generation, as well as professional creative workloads such as AI-assisted creation and 3D rendering. The significance of this generation goes beyond higher specifications. It further expands the scale of local AI workloads that can be handled by a compact workstation. From a Single Desktop System to Dual-System Clusters and 2U Rack Deployment The local AI computing capabilities of the MS-S1 MAX-P495 can be further expanded through multi-system deployment. Two 192GB MS-S1 MAX-P495 units can form a dual-system cluster capable of running Qwen3.5-397B locally at approximately 16 tok/s. The system also supports 2U rack deployment, allowing multiple units to be linked together to form a distributed cluster. In testing, a four-system configuration successfully ran DeepSeek-R1 671B Q4 (380GB, Q4_0 quantization). From a single system to dual-system clusters and multi-node deployments, the MS-S1 MAX-P495 extends local AI computing from individual desktop environments to larger-scale deployments for enterprises and research teams. For MINISFORUM, Local AI is not simply about improving the performance of individual products; it represents an important direction for the company's future computing portfolio. Around the needs of locally deployed large models, professional AI workloads, and scalable computing, MINISFORUM is continuing to develop a product portfolio spanning high-performance standalone workstations and multi-node deployments, enabling more AI computing to be completed locally. The MS-S1 MAX-P495 is not merely another product iteration, but another step in MINISFORUM's continued expansion from high-performance standalone Local AI systems toward scalable local computing platforms. The MS-S1 MAX-P495 with 192GB RAM and a 2TB SSD is now available for pre-order at a regular price of US$9,249, with a 20% discount bringing the price to US$7,399. Shipping is expected to begin in mid-October. https://s.minisforum.com/4rQVQMB About MINISFORUM: Founded in 2018, MINISFORUM is a Global Edge Computing Solution Brand & System Integrator building edge computing devices for the private AI era. Its product portfolio includes AI Agent NAS, AI Mini Workstations, AI Mini PCs and AtomMan Mini Gaming PCs, serving more than 4 million users across 100+ countries. With a global distribution and supporting network, adhering to its core philosophy, MINISFORUM keeps technological progress in step with life, advocates computing power equity, and extends computing power to families and businesses worldwide. For more information, please visit: https://www.minisforum.com/ Contact: Senior PR Manager Saven pr@minisforum.comen_prnasisa · philippines
SCI & TECH5d agoChinese team says its all-in-one mini artificial pancreas offers next-gen diabetes careChinese scientists have created a wearable all-in-one device combining a glucose sensor and insulin micropump that they say paves the way for a fully autonomous mini artificial pancreas, although it has so far only been tested on mice. Unlike existing commercial systems for managing diabetes that typically require patients to wear two separate patches for monitoring and hormone delivery, the new prototype combines both functions in a single coin-sized device. Researchers from the University of...South China Morning Post
SCI & TECH6d agoChina races to build AI data centres across energy-rich hinterlandBeijing is rolling out computing infrastructure at breakneck speed in Inner MongoliaFinancial Times
SCI & TECH6d agoChina Might Lap the United States on AI AdoptionBeijing’s collaborative approach is winning over other states.Foreign Policy
SCI & TECH6d agoChina Might Lap the United States on AI AdoptionBeijing’s collaborative approach is winning over other states.Foreign Policy
SCI & TECH6d agoSmart stays, warm welcomes: Hotels embrace AI while promoting Filipino hospitalityThe rapid rise of artificial intelligence in late 2022 has reshaped how industries work, from technology and education to health care and finance. Its influence has since moved into less expected spaces, including an industry built largely around human interaction: hospitality.businessmirror · philippines