The world's first OpenAI robot was born, which can interact with people autonomously丨Tech Weekly

Compiled by Zhou Shuyi and Wang Xiang

Starship successfully reaches orbital speed on third test launch

At 21:25 Beijing time on March 14, the Starship launch vehicle and spacecraft integrated system developed by SpaceX ignited and launched from the Starbase launch site in Texas, USA, to carry out the third orbital test. After ignition, all 33 engines of the first-stage super-heavy booster operated normally, and the interstage thermal separation was successfully achieved in about 2 minutes and 44 seconds. However, only a few engines of the first stage successfully ignited during the subsequent return process, the rocket body overheated, the attitude became unstable, and finally disintegrated at an altitude of 462 meters, failing to splash down softly in the Gulf of Mexico as planned. The second-stage spacecraft entered the space glide phase, reached orbital speed, and completed technical demonstrations such as opening and closing the payload bay door (aimed at verifying its ability to send satellites and other payloads into space) and propellant transfer (aimed at verifying its ability to refuel in orbit). The spacecraft failed to re-ignite the engine in space as originally planned, and lost contact with the control console during the re-entry phase of the atmosphere at about 49 minutes.

Source: SpaceX

Previously, SpaceX conducted two Starship test launches in April and November 2023. During the first test launch, the propellant leaking from the rear end of the first stage caught fire, causing most of the engines to lose control and the rocket was forced to self-destruct 4 minutes after launch. During the second test launch, the first and second stages separated successfully, but the first stage exploded and disintegrated during the subsequent return process, and the second stage spacecraft that continued to fly lost contact with the control console at an altitude of 148 kilometers.

Source: SpaceX

According to reports, the Starship is composed of a first-stage "super-heavy booster" and a second-stage "Starship" spacecraft. It is designed to be fully recyclable, 121 meters high, 9 meters in diameter, and has a maximum thrust of 7,590 tons. It is currently the world's largest and most powerful super-heavy launch vehicle. The Starship has a low-Earth orbit capacity of 250 tons and a recyclable capacity of 150 tons. It is designed to transport personnel and cargo to low-Earth orbit, the moon, Mars, and beyond.

Explosion and disintegration! Japanese private enterprise's self-developed rocket launch failed

On March 13, the launch of the light rocket "KAIROS" No. 1 developed by the Japanese startup aerospace company Space One failed. The rocket exploded and disintegrated about 5 seconds after liftoff. Space One said at a press conference that afternoon that it was probably due to a failure in the first stage of the rocket, which activated the self-destruct function. The specific location of the failure is still unclear, and the company will analyze the sent-back data and investigate the cause.

At 10:01 Beijing time, KAIROS 1 was launched from the Kii Launch Center in Kushimoto Town, Wakayama Prefecture, Japan. The launch carried a prototype of a "rapid response" satellite from the Cabinet Satellite Intelligence Center (CSICE) of the Japanese government, which can partially replace the functions of government intelligence satellites. This is also the first time that a Japanese private enterprise has tried to use a self-developed rocket to send a satellite into space.

"KAIROS" No. 1 adopts a four-stage tandem configuration, consisting of three solid stages and one liquid stage. It is about 18 meters long, about 1.35 meters in diameter, and weighs about 23 tons. Its low-Earth orbit carrying capacity is 250 kilograms, and its sun-synchronous orbit carrying capacity is 150 kilograms. In 2019, a Japanese private company successfully launched a rocket to an altitude of more than 100 kilometers. It was the first time that a Japanese private company successfully launched a self-developed rocket, but the rocket did not carry a payload at the time.

Space One hopes to make KAIROS the space launch vehicle with the shortest time from contract signing to launch in the world. KAIROS 1 was originally scheduled to be launched in March 2022, but due to the shortage of semiconductor materials and the failure of rocket parts to arrive in time, the launch was postponed several times. The launch was originally scheduled for March 9, but was urgently stopped due to the discovery of ships in the sea warning area near the launch site.

'Iron lung man' dies from COVID-19

On March 11, Paul Alexander, known as the "Iron Lung Man," died of COVID-19 at the age of 78. He was previously recognized as the person who survived the longest in the "Iron Lung."

The "iron lung" is a negative pressure ventilator used to save patients who are unable to breathe due to polio. It is a closed metal cylinder in which the patient lies with only the head exposed. The air pressure in the cylinder is changed by pumping air in and out, causing the patient's chest to compress and expand for passive breathing. Polio is a highly contagious viral disease. It attacks the nervous system, and 0.5% of infected patients will suffer irreversible paralysis, and 5% to 10% of paralyzed patients will die from respiratory muscle paralysis.

Paul Alexander | Source: GoFundMe

In 1952, a polio epidemic broke out in the United States, with a total of 57,628 cases and more than a thousand deaths. Paul was unfortunately infected in this epidemic, and was almost completely paralyzed below the neck. He could not breathe independently and could only rely on the "iron lung" to survive. Later, with the help of physical therapist Sullivan, he learned glossopharyngeal breathing: "swallowing" air with the mouth, and the throat muscles squeezed the air into the throat and sent it to the lungs, which allowed him to leave the iron lung for a short time. Through unremitting efforts, Paul obtained a law degree, a lawyer qualification, and became a published author. During college, he was engaged to a classmate named Claire, but the marriage was abandoned due to the opposition of the girl's parents.

As Paul's body functions declined with age, the length of time he spent outside the iron lung gradually decreased. At the age of 74, he has been lying in the iron lung almost all the time. With Paul's death, the world's only remaining iron lung is still in operation, and the user is Martha Ann Lillard, 75, from Oklahoma, USA.

COVID-19 has shortened life expectancy by 1.6 years worldwide

A study published in The Lancet on March 11 showed that the COVID-19 epidemic caused the global population's average life expectancy to drop by 1.6 years in the first two years (2020-2021), a larger decline than previously expected, marking a reversal of decades of continuous growth in global life expectancy.

Research shows that the global population's all-cause mortality rate (total mortality rate due to various causes) continued to decline from 1950 to 2019, with a decrease of 62.8%, while the COVID-19 epidemic from 2020 to 2021 reversed this trend, causing the all-cause mortality rate to rise by 5.1%. From 1950 to 2021, the global population's life expectancy at birth increased from 49.0 years to 71.7 years; from 2019 to 2021, life expectancy fell by 1.6 years. Among 204 countries and regions, only 32 countries and regions observed an increase in life expectancy between 2019 and 2021. Child mortality has maintained a long-term downward trend, with the number of deaths of children under 5 years old falling from 5.21 million in 2019 to 4.66 million in 2021, a 7% decrease in mortality.

The study estimated that the COVID-19 epidemic caused 15.9 million excess deaths (all deaths directly or indirectly related to the COVID-19 pandemic) between 2020 and 2021. During the epidemic, 80 countries and regions had excess mortality rates of more than 1.5‰ in at least one year.

Paper link:
https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(24)00476-8

More than 2 million papers lost from the Internet

A study of more than 7 million online papers shows that more than 2 million papers have not been properly archived and preserved, and have been lost in the data flood of the Internet, which means that the existing digital archiving system has failed to keep up with the growth of academic output.

The digital object identifier (DOI) is currently widely used in academia to identify and link papers. It is equivalent to the "identity card number" of the paper. It is unique and immutable, and ensures the accurate extraction of digital objects in a network environment. The researchers analyzed 7,438,037 papers with DOIs and found that 28% of the papers were not archived by mainstream document repositories, and only 58% of the papers were stored in at least one document repository. There are many reasons for the loss of papers, including network server failures, journal or publisher bankruptcy, etc. Experts pointed out that having a DOI does not mean that the paper will exist forever, and the DOI may become invalid; compared with large publishers, small publishers have a higher risk of loss of papers.

The researchers said that this study only included articles with DOIs and did not traverse all document repositories, so it has certain limitations. The study recommends that digital archiving measures should be improved, stricter requirements should be imposed on DOI registration agencies, and the relevant awareness of publishers and researchers should be raised.

Paper link:
https://doi.org/10.31274/jlsc.16288

The world's first OpenAI robot was born, which can interact with people autonomously

On March 13, Figure, a robotics startup funded by OpenAI, released a video demonstration on the social platform X, showing the first humanoid robot powered by OpenAI's large model. In the video, the robot codenamed Figure 01 can interact with people through dialogue and complete tasks such as passing apples, picking up trash, and putting away tableware. When a person said he wanted to "eat something," Figure 01 picked up an apple from the many objects on the table and passed it over; when it then picked up the trash as instructed, it could also explain the reason for passing the apple.

Figure founder Brett Adcock said that Figure 01 demonstrates a conversation with humans under an end-to-end neural network framework, without any remote operation and the video is not accelerated.

According to reports, Figure 01 is powered by electricity, has a running time of 5 hours, and a walking speed of 1.2 m/s. The multimodal large model trained by OpenAI processes images taken by the onboard camera at a frequency of 10 Hz and generates 24 degrees of freedom (wrist posture and finger joint angles) at a frequency of 200 Hz.

Toothed whale menopause helps extend life

The evolution of menopause in toothed whales (such as killer whales, belugas and narwhals) may have helped extend lifespans, according to a study published March 13 in Nature, which found that menopause allowed females to help their offspring survive without competing with them for mates.

A female killer whale jumping out of the water | Source: Mlewan

Menopause is a very rare phenomenon. Only a few mammals such as humans and toothed whales experience menopause. The academic community has long had doubts about the process and reasons for its evolution. Researchers built and analyzed a database to compare the characteristics of toothed whale species that experience/do not experience menopause. The results showed that toothed whale species that experience menopause generally live about 40 years longer than other toothed whale species of similar size, and their reproductive lifespans are roughly the same. Menopause provides females with the opportunity to help other young offspring in the family, such as sharing food, caring for young children, and helping the group when resources are scarce, thereby increasing their chances of survival. Menopause allows their survival period to overlap with that of their offspring and grandchildren, but does not extend the overlap period with the reproductive lifespan of their offspring, reducing intergenerational reproductive competition. Researchers believe that menopause in humans and toothed whales is a manifestation of convergent evolution.

Intestinal flora affects anti-cancer efficacy

On March 14, researchers from Zhejiang University published an article in Cell, stating that they discovered that indolepropionic acid, a small molecule metabolite produced by intestinal flora, can continuously mobilize T cells to kill tumors, enhancing the efficacy of anti-PD-1 monoclonal antibodies in solid tumors such as colorectal cancer and breast cancer pigment tumors, and is expected to provide a new strategy for the precision treatment of tumors.

Among patients with colorectal cancer, only a few patients can benefit from immunotherapy such as anti-PD-1 monoclonal antibodies in the long term, and the efficacy varies greatly, making it difficult to meet clinical expectations. The researchers isolated a potential probiotic called Lactobacillus johnsonii by sequencing and screening fecal flora. Mouse model experiments showed that Lactobacillus johnsonii metabolizes tryptophan into indole lactic acid, while another member of the genus Clostridium, Clostridium sporogenes, can further metabolize indole lactic acid into indolepropionic acid. Indolepropionic acid can enable CD8+T cells to self-renew, proliferate, and differentiate into effector cells in response to immunotherapy, thereby continuously killing tumors. Compared with the use of anti-PD-1 monoclonal antibodies alone, supplementation with indolepropionic acid can significantly slow tumor growth in mice and enhance the efficacy of immunotherapy. The researchers said that the varying effects of immunotherapy in patients may be due to individual differences in intestinal flora and the different abundances of the two related intestinal strains; the team's research goal is to be able to give patients personalized and precise intestinal microecological treatment.

Paper link:
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2024.02.022

This article is supported by the Science Popularization China Starry Sky Project

Produced by: China Association for Science and Technology Department of Science Popularization

Producer: China Science and Technology Press Co., Ltd., Beijing Zhongke Xinghe Culture Media Co., Ltd.

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