"Hot Spot Review | Week of Science and Technology Events" is a new graphic column launched for academic headlines, which aims to help readers quickly understand the hot news of science and technology in the recent week. Due to the limited space (and knowledge), everyone is welcome to add more~
Hi, cute "academic bacteria", I am your lovely academic jun.
The last week was another "last week" in the past.
Last week, the recent hit new drama "Genius Basic Law" finale, "mathematical genius" Lao Lin won the love of many viewers with his personal talent, but careful netizens found that Lao Lin said Fermat's Last Theorem wrong in a trial class, ah ~ science is still rigorous Ah ~
A sad thing, experts found that there are academic fraudulent papers retracted 10 years later, still being widely cited, and called for: only real measures to prevent these withdrawn papers from continuing to be cited can prevent people from losing confidence in the entire scientific community.
but... In addition to these, what other hot news was there last week? Let's start with a brief review:
- The first scientific results of the Tianwen-1 Martian Energy Particle Analyzer were released
- New research on body temperature power generation! Scientists have developed a new type of heat transfer generator, which is efficient, durable and stretchable
- The weather is so hot, the sweat can not be wasted! Expert: Go generate electricity
- Without the need for sperm, eggs and uterus, scientists have successfully grown embryos in vitro
- Science: THE US FDA jointly accused former employees of "current practices have become an obstacle to global health"
- Tsinghua led the research and development, and the world's largest open biomedical knowledge map was launched
- Yann LeCun opens Google Research: Target communication has long been there, where are your innovations?
- The world's first amphibious artificial vision system was introduced, mimicking the eyes of crabs and using them on land and underwater
- Two new near-Earth asteroids have been discovered at the Purple Mountain Observatory
- The University of Science and Technology of China realizes long-distance entanglement between independent quantum memories
- The study found that graphene can be used to efficiently recover gold resources in e-waste
The following is a detailed version of the graphics, can be selectively read ~
The first scientific results of the Tianwen-1 Martian Energy Particle Analyzer were released
Recently, the Institute of Modern Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences cooperated with a number of units at home and abroad to obtain the first scientific results using the Tianwen-1 Martian Energy Particle Analyzer to study and discuss a solar high-energy particle event observed in the earth-fire transfer orbit based on the payload.
On November 29, 2020, the Martian Energy Particle Analyzer observed the first large-scale radial distribution of solar high-energy particle events for the 25th solar cycle at a ground fire transfer orbit of 1.39 astronomical units (au) from the Sun.
Subsequently, the researchers built simulation software, used the simulation data to compare and verify the scale calculation results of the back-transmitted original data, and obtained the geometric factors of the Mars Energy Particle Analyzer for different types of incident particles. The relationship between the sampling raw data and the observed orbital energy spectrum is sorted out, and a complete set of data analysis and processing methods is established to ensure the reliability of scientific detection data quality.
The study also found that the proton energy spectra observed at both locations were very similar in shape, both appearing as power law spectra, and their proton intensity time curves also had similar evolutionary trends during the decay stage of the solar high-energy particle event, showing a typical reservoir phenomenon. It is believed that the power law energy spectrum is likely to be generated in the source region of shock wave acceleration, and the vertical diffusion effect during propagation is a key factor in explaining the reservoir phenomenon in this event. In addition, the study also discussed the radial correlation of the peak intensity of solar high-energy particle events and the correlation of magnetic field line length.
In this solar high-energy particle event, the Mars energy particle analyzer and the near-Earth spacecraft observation data have a very good consistency, which shows that the functions and performance of the Mars energy particle analyzer instrument are in line with the design expectations, the data measured by the instrument is reliable, and it lays a good foundation for the subsequent study of the ring Mars exploration data, which is expected to help scientists better understand the Mars radiation environment and plan the deep space exploration mission.
Source: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Thesis Link:
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/ac80f5
New research on body temperature power generation! Scientists have developed a new type of heat transfer generator, which is efficient, durable and stretchable
Recently, a research team from the University of Washington developed an efficient stretchable heat transfer generator made of inorganic semiconductors and printed multifunctional soft materials, which has great application potential in self-powered wearable electronic devices, thermal touch sensors, soft robots and human-computer interaction.
Figure | wearable heat transfer generator 3D printed from a multifunctional elastomer composite material
According to reports, this flexible, wearable heat transfer generator can not only convert body heat into electrical energy, but also has the characteristics of softness, stretchability, strength and efficiency. In previous studies, it was difficult to fully combine these properties.
In addition, even after more than 15,000 tensile cycles of 30% strain, the prototype heat transfer generator remains in full function, with a power density of 6.5 times higher than previous stretchable heat transfer generators.
One of the unique features of this research is that it covers the entire production process, from material synthesis to device manufacturing and characterization. This gives the research team the freedom to design new materials, get creative, and design every step of the production process.
Thesis Link:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/aenm.202201413
In the finale of the "Basic Law of Genius", the "mathematical genius" Lao Lin made a theorem wrong
Some careful netizens found that in the plot of the 23rd episode of the "Basic Law of Genius", the "mathematical genius" Lao Lin was not very rigorous when telling a story about Fermat's Last Theorem in the audition class, and the positive integer was explained as an integer solution, and the nth power was said to be n.
So, what is Fermat's Last Theorem?
Anyone who has studied planar geometry knows that the sum of the squares of the two right-angled sides (a, b) of a right triangle is equal to the square of the hypotenuse (c). It can be proved that there are an infinite number of integer combinations of a, b, c. So, what if the exponent in the above formula is replaced by another integer?
Around 1637, the French scholar Fermat, while reading the Latin translation of Diophantu's Arithmetic, asserted that when the integer n > 2, the equation xⁿ + yⁿ = zⁿ has no positive integer solution, which is Fermat's Last Theorem.
Although many excellent mathematicians studied it over the next 350 years, they failed to prove this conjecture or falsify it.
It wasn't until 1994 that British mathematician Andrew Wiles spent 7 years on the basis of previous research to finally prove the conjecture, for which he won the 2016 Abel Prize.
Source: Science and Technology Daily
The weather is so hot, the sweat can not be wasted! Expert: Go generate electricity
Sweat has the effect of cooling down, protecting the skin, excreting waste in the body, etc., and overdeveloped sweat glands often bring distress to people: sticky sweat wet clothing, not only makes people feel uncomfortable, but also may emit an "unfriendly" smell.
However, in fact, salty sweat has other wonderful uses, that is, to generate electricity.
Recently, a research team from the University of Massachusetts Amherst said that the new power-generating biofilm they designed is expected to revolutionize the wearable electronics industry, providing long-term, continuous power for personal medical sensors, personal electronic devices, etc.
Figure | actual photo of the new biofilm (left) and schematic diagram (right)
According to the paper, the biofilm, which is only about the thickness of a piece of paper, is made up of a modified sulfur-reducing bacillus (G. sulfurreducens) naturally arising. Compared with previous studies, this new biofilm can not only provide as much or more energy as a battery of the same size, but also can continue to work without the need for "feeding".
This transparent, compact, thin, flexible biofilm can be applied directly to the skin like a Band-Aid, continuously generating a steady stream of electricity.
Thesis Link:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-32105-6
The harm is endless! 10 years after the academic paper was retracted, it is still being widely cited
Is the retraction of an academically fraudulent paper the end of its "destiny"? At least this is not the case, and it may be repeatedly cited in subsequent published papers, continuing to mislead research.
The famous American anesthesiologist Scott Reuben academic fraud case has been a sensation. The data in at least 20 of his papers was partially or even completely tampered with, and 25 of his papers were eventually retracted. However, a study published this year found that 10 years after the paper was retracted, Ruben's paper was cited 420 times, of which 360 were from papers that had been retracted.
So, are the authors of the retracted paper informed? A survey of papers recently published in the journal Anesthesiology gives the answer. Surveys revealed that nearly 90 percent of the more than 400 corresponding authors who cited question papers had no idea they had been retracted.
In this regard, industry insiders appealed that only by taking real measures to prevent these withdrawn papers from continuing to be cited can the scientific community be prevented from losing confidence in the entire scientific community.
Content source: Science Network
Thesis Link:
https://doi.org/10.1097/ALN.0000000000004302
Without the need for sperm, eggs and uterus, scientists have successfully grown embryos in vitro
Embryonic stem cells have long been thought to have the potential to develop into organs or embryos, but this process has never been achieved by scientists in vitro. Even the process of synthesizing embryonic stem cells into an embryonic model in vitro is difficult to achieve. There are two main difficulties:
On the one hand, some embryonic stem cells (with pluripotency) are not fertilized eggs (with totipotency), and in order to synthesize embryonic models with different cells, it is necessary to further stimulate its ability to differentiate; On the other hand, the in vitro culture environment is complex, and the artificial uterus cannot fully simulate the environment suitable for cell growth.
Recently, stem cell scientist Jacob Hanna et al. said in a paper published in the authoritative scientific journal Cell that they did not use sperm, eggs and uterus, and only used stem cells to cultivate embryonic models of synthetic mice. Judging from the experimental results, the synthetic embryo not only has a beating heart, but also has its own neural folds, foregut tubes, blood islands and other structures.
One of the key breakthroughs in this research was the success of embryonic stem cells to independently produce a complete prointestinal embryonic structure, including embryonic and extraembryonic tissue (placenta, etc.), and even from the embryonic embryo to the early stages of organ formation (E8.5).
However, this study also has certain limitations. For example, this study only proceeded to day 8 of synthetic embryonic development, which is only the early stage of embryonic development (the full gestation cycle of mice is 20 days).
At the same time, the success rate of this method is only 0.5% - only about 50 out of every 10,000 cell pellets can be successfully assembled into embryos, and the rest cannot develop normally. Moreover, the experiment did not transfer the cultured embryos back into the uterus of mice in an attempt to develop life.
Content source: Qubits
Thesis Link:
https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(22)00981-3
Science: THE US FDA jointly accused former employees of "current practices have become an obstacle to global health"
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) obtained significant data through reviews of COVID-19-related trials, drugs, and vaccines.
However, in an article published in the science policy forum of the authoritative journal (click to view details), four former employees from the FDA jointly pointed out that the FDA's long-standing practice of confidentiality has prevented it from sharing critical data with regulators around the world, especially in low- and middle-income countries. It is worth mentioning that these four industry experts have all served in the FDA for a maximum of 24 years. They are:
Murray Lumpkin, Associate Director of Regulatory Affairs at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Margaret A. Hamburg, President of the Bio Advisory Group of the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), William B. Schultz, Partner at Law Firm Zuckerman Spaeder, and Joshua M. Joshua M. Thompson, Associate Dean of Public Health Practices and Community Engagement at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Sharfstein。
According to Lumpkin et al., the current UNFINISHED COVID-19 pandemic has proven that the FDA's decades-long sharing practice isolates it and weakens the ability of other countries to use its information to make reliable and rapid regulatory decisions on key public health issues.
At the same time, Lumpkin et al. argue that there is a need for a transparency policy for the FDA to share more data with other regulators around the world. The new policy will promote U.S. leadership in science and regulation and advance global health.
Thesis Link:
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq4981
Tsinghua led the research and development, and the world's largest open biomedical knowledge map was launched
The BIOS, the biomedical informatics ontology system jointly developed by Tsinghua University, has become the world's largest open biomedical knowledge map.
The large-scale open biomedical knowledge graph , Biomedical Informatics Ontology System , jointly developed by the Research Group of Associate Professor Yu Sheng of the Statistical Research Center of Tsinghua University and the AI Platform Technology Research Center of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Digital Economy Research Institute (IDEA), has ushered in a major update and has become the world's largest open biomedical knowledge graph.
The "Integrated Medical Language System" (Unified Medical Language System), developed by the United States, has long been the benchmark for biomedical knowledge graphs. Due to the lack of large-scale biomedical knowledge maps that can be openly accessed in the field of Chinese, the domestic medical big data analysis lacks a platform foundation, and the development of scientific research and technology is seriously restricted. At the same time, UMLS based on multi-database integration and expert collation is also aging, and its data quality and development speed can no longer meet the needs of the era of big data and artificial intelligence.
The BIOS is the first large open biomedical knowledge graph generated entirely by machine learning algorithms, with terminology discovery, semantic analysis, concept generation, relationship discovery, and cross-language alignment entirely automated by the model. In this update, the R&D team has continuously strengthened the algorithm technology based on the real data effect, so that the new BIOS has reached a huge volume of 28.48 million concepts and 54.56 million terms (33.48 million English, 21.08 million Chinese) in one fell swoop, and the terminology quality has been further improved.
In just one and a half years, the BIOS has reached several times the volume of UMLS, which not only reverses the difficult situation of the lack of large-scale open biomedical knowledge graphs in the Chinese field, but also fully demonstrates the great potential of artificial intelligence.
Source: Tsinghua University
Yann LeCun opens Google Research: Target communication has long been there, where are your innovations?
Late last month, Google AI, in its new study LocoProp: Enhancing BackProp via Local Loss Optimization, proposed a general-purpose hierarchical loss-constructing framework for multilayer neural networks, LocoProp, which achieves performance close to second-order methods while using only the first-order optimizer. Moreover, their local loss construction method is the first time that the square loss is used as a local loss.
However, Turing Award winner Yann LeCun and others have questioned that there are many versions of target prop, some dating back to 1986, and how is Google's LocoProp different from them?
For LeCun's question, Haohan Wang, who will soon become an assistant professor at UIUC, agrees. He says he's sometimes genuinely surprised why some authors think such a simple idea is a historical first. Maybe they did something different, but the publicity team couldn't wait to come out and claim everything...
However, there are also people who are not interested in LeCun, believing that he questions and even leads wars for the sake of competition. LeCun responded, claiming that his questions were not about competition, citing former members of his lab, Marc'Aurelio Ranzato, Karol Gregor, koray kavukcuoglu, and others who have used some versions of target communication and now work at DeepMind.
What do you think of LeCun's statement?
Content source: Heart of the Machine
The world's first amphibious artificial vision system was introduced, mimicking the eyes of crabs and using them on land and underwater
Artificial vision systems have always been one of the core technologies in the field of automatic driving. Currently, all artificial vision systems are developed on land or underwater alone, and the field of view is generally only 180 degrees.
For robots that need to work on land and underwater at the same time, an amphibious computer vision system that can switch between land and underwater modes is very important.
Recently, the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST) and Seoul National University in South Korea have developed a new artificial vision system inspired by the tidal crab, which can be used in amphibious water and at the same time, but also has a 360-degree circular view, which is very cool.
The cornea of the tidal crab is flattened, and the refractive index can vary, which can counteract the defocusing effect due to changes in the external environment – which is a great limitation for other compound-eye animals.
Mimicking the eye of a tidal crab, the researchers combined the microlens array with a gradient refractive index and a flexible comb silicon photodiode array on a spherical structure. According to reports, this system can be used for the development of unconventional applications, such as panoramic motion detection and obstacle avoidance in changing environments, as well as augmented reality and virtual reality.
Content source: Big Data Digest
Thesis Link:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41928-022-00789-9
Two new near-Earth asteroids have been discovered at the Purple Mountain Observatory
Late last month, the International Minor Planet Center issued an announcement confirming the discovery of two new near-Earth asteroids, 2022 OS1 and 2022 ON1, by the Purple Mountain Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences on July 23 and 24. Both asteroids were observed by the Near-Earth Object Telescope at the Xuyi Neo-Object Observatory at the Purple Mountain Observatory. So far, the telescope has found a total of 32 near-Earth asteroids.
Asteroid 2022 OS1 had an apparent brightness of about 20.9 magnitudes, an apparent velocity of 0.895 degrees per day, and an estimated diameter of 230 m. Asteroid 2022 ON1 had an apparent brightness of about 20.5 magnitudes, an apparent velocity of 0.681 degrees per day, and an estimated diameter of about 45m. The apparent velocity of both near-Earth asteroids is much higher than that of ordinary main-belt asteroids. Through shared data-driven follow-up observations by domestic and foreign observation equipment, the orbital parameters of 2022 OS1 and 2022 ON1 have been determined, confirming that they are two Amor-type near-Earth asteroids.
The Purple Mountain Observatory Near-Earth Object Telescope is currently the only dedicated equipment for continental near-Earth object monitoring, and it is also the only backbone equipment for mainland china to join the International Asteroid Warning Network (IAWN) to carry out data sharing. In terms of research on monitoring and early warning methods for near-Earth asteroids and operational operation capabilities, the Purple Mountain Observatory has a good reserve and has laid a solid foundation for the operation of the next generation of near-Earth object monitoring and early warning network to systematically improve the monitoring and early warning capabilities of continental near-Earth asteroids.
Source: Purple Mountain Observatory
The University of Science and Technology of China realizes long-distance entanglement between independent quantum memories
The basic unit of a quantum network is long-distance two-node entanglement. By using quantum storage technology to store photons, efficient entangled connections between different nodes will be possible. Constructing entanglement between memories and expanding node spacing has always been a research hotspot in the direction of quantum networks. In the implemented two-node entanglement experiment, the farthest straight-line distance is only 1.3 kilometers.
Recently, Pan Jianwei of the University of Science and Technology of China and his colleagues Bao Xiaohui and Zhang Qiang combined long-life cold atom quantum storage technology with quantum frequency conversion technology, and used on-site optical fibers to establish entanglement between independent quantum storage nodes 12.5 kilometers apart in a straight line.
In the study, Node A is located in the Hefei Innovation Industrial Park and Node B is located in the East District of the University of Science and Technology of China, and is connected by 20.5 kilometers of optical fiber. The team produces a long-lived light entangled with atoms at node A and sends the resulting single photons to node B after frequency conversion, where node B converts the received photons again and stores them in another quantum memory.
The research team used laser-cooled rubidium atoms for quantum storage, with photon wavelengths of 795 nanometers, which are not suitable for transmission within long optical fibers. Using a periodic polarized lithium niobate waveguide developed by the Jinan Quantum Research Institute, the team transferred the photon wavelength to 1342 nanometers, greatly reducing the attenuation of photons in long fibers. Another difficulty in this work is long-life quantum storage, which needs to exceed the photon transmission time. To this end, the team designed a new light and atom entanglement generation scheme, while obtaining a long storage life, the resulting photon bits are encoded in time freedom, which is very suitable for frequency conversion and long-distance transmission.
Based on this, the research team successfully achieved long-distance entanglement between independent memories. This work has laid the foundation for the subsequent applications of building a multi-node quantum network prototype system, conducting quantum physical tests, and exploring device-independent quantum key distribution. The relevant research work has been supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology, Anhui Province, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and the Hefei National Laboratory.
Source: University of Science and Technology of China
Thesis Link:
https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.129.050503
The study found that graphene can be used to efficiently recover gold resources in e-waste
Gold is widely used as a good conductor of electricity in fields such as electronic products and consumer goods. With the acceleration of the replacement of electronic products, e-waste has become one of the major challenges to global sustainable development, so it is of great significance to recover gold resources from e-waste to achieve the development of circular economy.
Recently, Su Yang, assistant professor of Shenzhen International Graduate School of Tsinghua University, Academician Cheng Huiming, professor of Shenzhen University of Science and Technology of Chinese Academy of Sciences and Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, and Andre Geim, Nobel Laureate in Physics and Professor of The University of Manchester and The Gem Graphene Center of Shenzhen International Graduate School of Tsinghua University, have found that a graphene material based on reduced graphene oxide has super extraction ability for trace gold resources in e-waste. Without the need for additional energy and other materials and chemicals, this graphene material can quickly adsorb gold ions and reduce them to pure gold particles.
The study found that the microstructure of such graphene materials determines its adsorption performance to gold, and the joint role of its graphene region and oxygen-containing functional group region (oxidation region) is the key to achieving its excellent gold adsorption and extraction performance. Among them, the graphene region can spontaneously reduce the gold ions to metallic gold, while the oxidation zone provides good dispersion, ensuring the large specific surface area of graphene and the efficient adsorption of gold ions. Moreover, graphene materials can achieve precise selective adsorption of gold ions. By regulating the protonation process of its oxygenated functional groups, graphene can accurately extract gold from e-waste with little adsorption of other coexisting metal elements.
In addition, the team has also developed a graphene-based continuous gold adsorption method suitable for large-scale production, which can efficiently and continuously recover gold resources from e-waste. It is worth noting that due to the use of commercial graphene oxide as a raw material, its cost is much lower than the gold price, so the graphene material has the economic feasibility of large-scale application, providing a new solution to solve the dual challenges of sustainable development of gold resources and e-waste recycling.
Source: Tsinghua University
Thesis Link:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-32204-4