Simulating a Martian landing

A cable system replicating the rough descent through another plant’s atmosphere helped the Tianwen-1 lander become the first non-American lander to set down safely on Mars. In May this year, when China's Tianwen-1 deployed a working lander on Mars, President Xi Jinping was lavish with praise fo...

A new rapid lung-cancer drug sensitivity test

An organoid-based test to predict drug effectiveness returns individualized results within a week for the world's deadliest cancer.Hundreds of miniature organs, or ‘organoids’, grown in a nanoliter-scale microwell array system designed by Tsinghua researchers and their collaborators could soon ...

A big new player in large-scale natural-language AI

Introducing the world’s largest natural-language artificial intelligence model – the multi-lingual, multimedia-generating Wu Dao.China’s first super-scale natural-language AI was unveiled in early 2021, and an even larger version of 1.75 trillion parameters was released in June. It’s currentl...

How SARS-CoV-2 packs its punch

Early details on the molecular architecture of the COVID-19 virus were key for vaccine developers in helping outline the shapes of its rich genome, flailing spikes, and sugar shields. In late 2020, a group led by Professor Sai Li at Tsinghua University detailed the molecular shape of SARS-CoV-2 a...

Filling the gaps in large concrete dams

Using rock-filled concrete to make large dams means they are stronger, cheaper, and more environmentally friendly to build.By most measures, China is the world leader in dam building. It leads the world in number of large dams, defined as structures of more than 10 to 15m in height by the Interna...