1. Long March 2D rocket sends four satellites into orbit

A Long March 2D carrier rocket was launched from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in Shanxi province on June 11, in order to transport four satellites into orbit. These included the Beijing-3 commercial remote-sensing satellite as well as three small experimental satellites.

This was the 52nd launch of a Long March 2D rocket and the 373rd mission of the Long March rocket family.

China sends four satellites into orbit on June 11. [Photo by Zheng Taotao/provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

2. AI can design chips in a few hours

A breakthrough in artificial intelligence (AI) was published in the British journal Nature on June 9, which indicated that machine learning tools can dramatically speed up the design of computer chips.

Studies have shown that the tools can produce viable chip designs with performance comparable to that of human engineers in just a few hours, saving thousands of hours of labor for each generation of computer chips in the future.

3. New study finds how COVID-19 destroys lungs

The first detailed atomic model of the COVID-19 envelope protein was published in the journal Nature Communications on June 8 by scientists at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in the United States.

The envelope protein binds to the human lung cell linking a protein called PALS1 that is essential for maintaining lung mucosa.

The model shows how the two proteins interact, helping to explain how the virus can cause extensive lung damage in particularly vulnerable patients and then escape the lungs to infect other organs.

4. Chinese researchers directly observe non-Abelian topological charge

Researchers from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, the University of Hong Kong and the National University of Defense Technology directly observed the non-Abelian topological chargers in a one-dimensional energy band system and mapped clearly to the sphere of an Eigen coordinate frame by constructing a transmission line network protected by spatial and temporal inversion.

The research results were recently published in the Nature journal.

5. China's gas turbine exported overseas for the first time

The CGT25-D gas turbine, which was independently developed by the 703 Institute of China State Shipbuilding Corporation Limited, recently passed its acceptance at the Novatek gas pressurization station in Russia, following a 72-hour on-site examination and test.

The gas turbine is a core part of the natural gas transmission project. It is China's first gas turbine to be applied in an extremely low temperature environment, and is also the nation's first gas turbine exported to a foreign country with completely independent intellectual property rights.