Quantum random number generators play a crucial role in securing high-demand information contexts by producing true random numbers. Nevertheless, the large volume and high cost limit their widespread use. Here, a system on-chip is proposed that fully leverages the advantages of different photonic integrated platforms, where the interference optical paths and photodiodes are integrated on a standard silicon process, while the laser source on-chip is realized on a III–V platform. Using micro-lens coupling package technology with coupling loss lower than 2 dB, the components on different platforms are combined and packaged with the amplifier circuits in a 42 mm × 24 mm footprint in a butterfly form. This miniaturized and cost-effective entropy source enables outputting a vacuum noise signal with a 3-dB bandwidth of over 500 MHz. After sampling and post-processing, a random number generation rate of up to 6.57 Gbps is achieved.

Mars once had abundant liquid water, yet orbiters and rovers have found far less carbonate rock than expected for a planet that may have had a thick, carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere. A new geochemical modelling study led by Chang-Chin Wang, with Professor Tomohiro Usui at JAXA and the University of Tokyo, and Associate Professor Mohit Melwani Daswani at ELSI, shows that the type of rock water reacts with, not just water itself, controls whether calcium/iron-rich or magnesium-rich carbonates form. Feldspar-rich rocks, increasingly detected on the Martian surface, readily produce the calcium/iron-rich carbonates seen in many locations. The simulations also show how percolating groundwater could be quietly burying carbonates underground, helping explain their apparent scarcity on the surface.

Scientists have used X-ray images taken during a rocket flight to capture metal dendrites in microgravity for the first time, revealing insights that could improve manufacturing processes such as casting, welding and metal 3D printing. 

Dr. Chi Kyung (CK) Kim of the Department of Neurology, Korea University Guro Hospital, and his research team (Dr. Kim Beom-joon of the Department of Neurology, Dr. Jun Sun-woo of the Department of Radiology, Seoul National University Bundang Hospital, and CMO Ryu Wi-sun of JLK) successfully conducted a multinational validation of AI technology that precisely detects large vessel occlusion (LVO) in acute stroke patients using only standard brain CT (non-contrast CT) without contrast agents.

 

In a recent study published in Science China Earth Sciences, researchers from the Research Group of Seismic Anisotropy and Deep Tectoncis, the Institute of Earthquake Forecasting, China Earthquake Administration, present a lithospheric azimuthal anisotropic model in the E margin and SE margin of Tibetan Plateau (model AniCD-L). The model reveals distinct north–south zonation of lithospheric anisotropy and provides evidence that the southwestern boundary of the South China block extends at least to the vicinity of the Red River Fault at the upper mantle scale. The model AniCD-L provides new seismological constraints on intracontinental deformation mechanisms associated with the India–Eurasia collision.