https://www.scmp.com/rss/524399/feed The latest news and top stories on University of California, Berkeley. Its main areas of focus include academic excellence, groundbreaking research and public service across over 300 degree programmes. Recognised for its significant contributions to science, including the discovery of sixteen chemical elements and involvement in the Manhattan Project, the university is also noted for developing the LMArena AI evaluation platform. UC Berkeley has produced numerous Nobel laureates and is a leading... en https://assets.i-scmp.com/static/img/icons/scmp-meta-1200x630.png https://www.scmp.com Alex Lo Alex Lo After the Louisiana Purchase from France in 1803, which almost doubled the size of the United States’ territory, US president Thomas Jefferson commissioned the legendary Lewis and Clark expedition, which surveyed new routes from the Missouri river to the Pacific coast. It also carried out work in agriculture, ethnography (with indigenous peoples) and geography. Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, that was the kind of science the US government was willing to pay for – practical,... https://www.scmp.com/opinion/china-opinion/article/3353088/us-scientific-self-harm-will-only-help-china?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/opinion/china-opinion/article/3353088/us-scientific-self-harm-will-only-help-china?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 13 May 2026 01:30:05 +0000 Paul McNamara Paul McNamara Tired of the stereotypical expectations imposed on her as a young girl, Yvette Kong Man-yi “cut my hair short and looked like a little boy”. “I was from that era where they forced me to take ballet classes,” said 2016 Olympic Games swimmer Kong. “I wasn’t into wearing skirts and dresses … I was very into soccer, and a huge fan of Michael Owen. “During the 2002 World Cup, I was wearing a jersey with his name on the back and blended into a bunch of boys playing on a small football court. If they... https://www.scmp.com/sport/hong-kong/article/3345800/hong-kong-olympic-swimmer-yvette-kong-happy-keep-defying-traditional-limitations?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/sport/hong-kong/article/3345800/hong-kong-olympic-swimmer-yvette-kong-happy-keep-defying-traditional-limitations?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 08 Mar 2026 00:00:12 +0000 Sumnima Kandangwa Sumnima Kandangwa The latest season of Netflix’s Bridgerton, which premiered on January 29, is a reimagined Cinderella story. Adapted from author Julia Quinn’s novel series, the new season follows Benedict Bridgerton, the second oldest son of a well-established family in Regency-era society, and his love story with Sophie, who has been made to work as a maid in her own house by her stepmother Araminta Gun, played by Katie Leung. Of course, no Cinderella story is complete without at least one evil stepsister – and... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/style/people/celebrities/article/3344855/meet-michelle-mao-who-plays-evil-stepsister-rosamund-li-bridgertons-season-4?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/style/people/celebrities/article/3344855/meet-michelle-mao-who-plays-evil-stepsister-rosamund-li-bridgertons-season-4?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 28 Feb 2026 10:00:19 +0000 Ben Jiang Ben Jiang A new technique called TurboDiffusion claims to be able to accelerate artificial intelligence video-generation speeds by up to 200 times at scale, without compromising overall image quality, according to a recently published paper. The technique reduced the time needed to generate a five-second, standard-definition video clip from more than three minutes to just 1.9 seconds – a nearly 100 times acceleration – when it was tested on a consumer-grade system with Nvidia’s RTX 5090 graphics... https://www.scmp.com/tech/article/3337852/need-speed-chinese-researchers-unveil-new-technique-near-instant-ai-video-creation?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/tech/article/3337852/need-speed-chinese-researchers-unveil-new-technique-near-instant-ai-video-creation?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 27 Dec 2025 00:00:11 +0000 Dannie Peng Dannie Peng Li Minyong, a prominent medicinal chemist and a fellow of multiple international research societies, died on November 16 at the age of 49. His sudden death marks China’s latest loss of a leading scientist at the height of their research career. Li, a professor and deputy dean of the school of pharmaceutical sciences at Hainan University, dedicated himself to pioneering drug discovery through light-controlled and bioactive visualisation technologies. He was elected a Fellow of Britain’s Royal... https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3334335/li-minyong-noted-chinese-chemist-and-royal-society-fellow-dies-age-49?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3334335/li-minyong-noted-chinese-chemist-and-royal-society-fellow-dies-age-49?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 28 Nov 2025 09:59:34 +0000 Victoria Bela Victoria Bela A Chinese biomedical researcher whose academic trajectory included years at the University of California, Berkeley, and collaborations with pioneering chemical engineers has died at the age of 44. Xie Hongxue, who had been working as a lecturer for nearly five years at the school of materials science and engineering at West Anhui University, a small regional college in central China, died in Wuhan on November 16 from an unnamed illness, according to Shanghai-based news site ThePaper.cn. Xie’s... https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3334183/ex-uc-berkeley-scientist-dies-aged-44-amid-growing-concern-over-toll-chinese-academics?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3334183/ex-uc-berkeley-scientist-dies-aged-44-amid-growing-concern-over-toll-chinese-academics?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 27 Nov 2025 04:00:13 +0000 Associated Press Associated Press Blue Origin launched its huge New Glenn rocket on Thursday with a pair of Nasa spacecraft destined for Mars. It was only the second flight of the rocket that Jeff Bezos’ company and Nasa were counting on to get people and supplies to the moon - and it was a complete success. The almost 100-metre New Glenn blasted into the afternoon sky from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, sending Nasa’s twin Mars orbiters on a drawn-out journey to the red planet. Lift-off was stalled four days by lousy local... https://www.scmp.com/news/world/united-states-canada/article/3332712/blue-origin-launches-huge-rocket-carrying-twin-nasa-spacecraft-mars?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/news/world/united-states-canada/article/3332712/blue-origin-launches-huge-rocket-carrying-twin-nasa-spacecraft-mars?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 13 Nov 2025 21:33:55 +0000 Connor Mycroft Connor Mycroft An American Nobel laureate has lamented the “very bad” state of scientific collaboration between the US and China as he praised Hong Kong and the mainland for their “tremendous respect” for science and academia. Randy Schekman, who won the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine in 2013, also praised Hong Kong’s openness and “free spirit” compared with the mainland, while urging both regions to foster more creativity among youth. He made the remarks at a press briefing ahead of his keynote address... https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/society/article/3330117/us-nobel-laureate-praises-hong-kong-blames-washington-china-science-impasse?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/society/article/3330117/us-nobel-laureate-praises-hong-kong-blames-washington-china-science-impasse?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 24 Oct 2025 00:30:15 +0000 Vincent Chow Vincent Chow Chinese fintech giant Ant Group has open-sourced an inference framework for a relatively new type of artificial intelligence model that it said could make AI systems more efficient, surpassing a framework proposed by researchers at US chipmaking giant Nvidia. The Alibaba Group Holding affiliate said Monday that its framework, dInfer, was designed for diffusion language models – a newer class of models that generate outputs in parallel, unlike “autoregressive” systems used in large language... https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3329138/ant-group-explores-ai-inference-framework-10-times-faster-nvidias-solution?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3329138/ant-group-explores-ai-inference-framework-10-times-faster-nvidias-solution?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 15 Oct 2025 11:24:16 +0000 Vincent Chow Vincent Chow Tencent Holdings’ new artificial intelligence model, Hunyuan Image 3.0, has surpassed Google DeepMind’s “Nano Banana” as the leading image-generation model among both open-source and closed products, according to a major public leaderboard. As of Saturday, the open-source Hunyuan Image 3.0 secured the top position in the text-to-image rankings on LMArena, an AI model evaluation platform originally started by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley. The previous leader – Google... https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3328003/tencents-ai-model-hunyuan-image-30-tops-leaderboard-beating-googles-nano-banana?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3328003/tencents-ai-model-hunyuan-image-30-tops-leaderboard-beating-googles-nano-banana?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 06 Oct 2025 10:00:15 +0000