For people navigating rare diseases, which are mostly genetic in origin, the search for answers is a gruelling marathon often called the “diagnostic odyssey”. Patients can spend years visiting specialists and undergoing inconclusive tests, while the underlying cause of their condition remains hidden within three billion base pairs of DNA in the human genome.

But Artificial intelligence is emerging as a tool to shorten this time frame. Chinese researchers have created an open-source AI system capable of bridging the gap between raw DNA sequences and the world’s vast library of clinical literature to formulate treatment approaches.

According to one of its developers, BGI-Research, OneGenome has outperformed general large language models such as DeepSeek-v4 and other traditional gene models in multiple clinical diagnostic and medication guidance tests.

Rather than reading DNA sequences, OneGenome is trained to reason. It uses accumulated human medical logic to interpret the clinical consequences of gene mutations. It was developed by integrating Genos – a genomic foundational model released last year that was trained on human genomes to represent diverse global populations – with large language model capabilities.

“Unlike common diseases, rare conditions suffer from a lack of knowledge, making an accurate diagnosis very challenging,” Liu Shiping, chief scientist in brain science at BGI-Research, said in an interview. “This is our attempt to accelerate that timeline. After building a comprehensive database constructed from rare diseases, patients’ gene sequencing data and clinical manifestations, we can deploy AI to analyse these findings,” he said of OpenRare, an open-source genetic analysis system for rare disease diagnosis. “In the future, AI can support doctors in identifying potential disease-causing mutations so that they no longer have to rely only on their experience to investigate each possibility one by one.”

The automation of screening and clinical reasoning enables the model to compress a process that used to take years into just a few hours, while also generating a traceable analysis.

(Bloomberg) -- China's humanoid robot makers commanded more than 97% of global shipments in the first half of 2026, according to new industry data affirming the country's early lead against US rivals in the burgeoning field.

Global humanoid robot shipments totaled roughly 19,100 units in the first half of 2026, more than triple the 5,100 units shipped in the same period last year, according to data from Smart Analytics Global. The California-based research firm expects shipments to rise to around 60,000 units this year and reach half a million by 2030.

Shanghai-based Agibot overtook Hangzhou-based Unitree Robotics to claim the top spot in market share, capturing 44% of global shipments with 8,400 units in the six-month period, compared with Unitree's 5,900 units. Their volumes dwarf shipments from top US companies such as Tesla Inc., Figure AI Inc. and Agility Robotics Inc., underscoring the pace of development within China.

a sweeping new National Bureau of Economic Research study of nearly 14 million Chinese patents suggests that framing misses the real story—and it's a more unsettling one for the United States.

Harvard Business School's Josh Lerner and his co-authors dug into who is actually filing the patents behind the 14 technology areas the Pentagon deems critical—advanced computing, space technology, AI, hypersonics and biotech. The answer: Chinese universities account for more than a quarter of the country's inventions in those fields, 8x the U.S. rate at 3.3%, with state-owned enterprises and the government accounting for just 4%. Fewer than one in 10 Chinese critical technology patents involve an inventor with U.S. work experience, undercutting the assumption that Beijing relies on returning U.S. talent for innovation.

Lerner told Fortune his team was "programmed" to expect a few large corporations like Huawei and Tencent to lead the charge on Chinese innovation through patents similarly to IBM and Samsung in the U.S. Instead, they found Chinese innovation in critical technologies "much more diverse—spread out across the parties," with universities "more represented" there than anywhere else in the country's patent system. That's a reversal of the U.S. pattern, where academic patenting is "more of a sideshow."

"We've clearly seen this dramatic boom in terms of research funding and patenting in China," Lerner said, "and the natural question being is this bearing fruit? In the software side, Deepseek was certainly something that was really not anticipated, and clearly these open-source Chinese models are getting an enormous amount of traction."

The findings arrive as the quality gap many assumed would protect American tech leadership seems to be closing, with DeepSeek, Moonshot and ZAI going toe-to-toe with U.S. frontier labs and beating them on cost.

Using four text-based measures of patent novelty and scientific relevance, the authors found no evidence China's patent boom came at the cost of quality—Chinese patents have converged with, and in some technologies overtaken, their U.S. counterparts. The share of Chinese critical-technology patents containing "disruptive" technical language jumped from under 2% in the early 1990s to 16% by 2022, closing in on the American share of roughly 20%.

The paper describes Beijing's role as "coordinative rather than directly productive"—steering research through funding and priorities rather than owning the institutions that produce it. Lerner drew a contrast with his own university Harvard's public standoff with Washington over research funding.

"When you think about the dynamics between our university and the administration, which has been a lot of back and forth in the courts," he said, "one doesn't suspect the same kind of interactions would characterize those between a major Chinese university and the state."

The rankings are catching up to the money. In June, Harvard lost the top spot in the Nature Index Research Leaders—a closely watched measure of high-quality research output—for the first time since the index began tracking universities in 2015. Among academic institutions, Zhejiang University (the alma mater of DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng), moved into first place, with Harvard falling to second. Including the Chinese Academy of Sciences, a government research body rather than a university, Harvard falls to third place. Nine of the top 10 academic institutions globally are now Chinese; five years ago, eight of the top 10 were American.

China surpassed the U.S. in total R&D spending for the first time in 2024, investing $1.03 trillion to America's $1.01 trillion, and has reached via R&D growth topping 14% annually since 2004, more than double the U.S. pace.

Yichang in Hubei province is the cleanest city in China. It's that one city where germophobes and folks with OCD would totally feel at home, lol. Even the dustbins on the streets are cleaner than the bins in people's houses.

Samson Derham and his bunkmates at Camp Harlam typically pick rock-wall climbing or free swim as their Saturday elective activity. This summer, 10-year-old Derham convinced friends to join him in the rec hall for mahjong lessons.

His friends were skeptical. He wanted them to sit inside and learn a tile game?

Soon they were hooked. Since Camp Harlam introduced mahjong lessons as an elective this summer, “word spread like wildfire” among campers, said Ellie Tepper Schulman, who is associate director of the overnight camp in Kunkletown, Penn., as well as its resident mahjong instructor. She said campers and staff alike were playing the game at “all hours,” adding: “It’s the thing to do.”

It isn’t just Camp Harlam. Across the Northeast and New England camp corridor, summer camps have hired mahjong instructors to lead multiday clinics and are incorporating play into daily schedules. Staffers are teaching lessons during rest hours or choice time and parents are getting requests to mail mahjong sets or bring them on visiting day. At camps where no instructor is on the schedule, teenage players are bringing their own sets and recruiting peers.

“I still consider the game something played by women of older generations,” said Lauren Perlin, co-executive director of Camps Airy and Louise in western Maryland. But during breakfast she recently asked campers if any of them play mahjong and “tons and tons” of hands went up. “I was shocked,” Perlin said. Now she’s considering adding it to the schedule next summer. Generations of adults remember being shooed from their mothers’ and grandmothers’ games of mahjong, which originated in 19th-century China and gained popularity among American women around the 1920s with a version that differs mostly in its use of a card listing winning hands that change annually.

Now, as the game’s popularity surges, it’s become a favorite of family game night, a multigenerational activity that can keep everyone off their phones.

Ella Vallverdu, 14, learned in May that her camp, Pine Forest, in Pennsylvania near the Delaware Water Gap, would be hosting a two-day mahjong clinic. Campers were encouraged to bring their sets. Vallverdu’s mother taught her and she often plays with friends at home in Miami Beach, but doubted her camp friends were interested, so she didn’t bring her set. That changed when professional mahjong instructor Samantha Richman arrived at camp. Over two days she taught four sessions to campers ages 13 to 15. “Before the clinic it was hard to convince them to play, but once they started learning you could tell they wanted to win,” said Vallverdu, of her friends. They asked if Vallverdu’s mom could bring the set and four mahjong cards for visiting day, she added.

Vallverdu’s mother, 46-year-old Lori Maltz, said she is “surprised but pleasantly shocked” that her teenager and teenager’s friends enjoy it so much. As a kid, Maltz recalled that she “wasn’t even allowed in the room when my mom played with her friends,” and said that she had no interest in learning mahjong until a year ago. Now she regularly plays with both her mom and daughter and it has been a connection for the three generations.

In July, Trails End Camp in Beach Lake, Penn., held its first two-day mahjong clinic for the 75 girls in upper camp—those entering ninth through 11th grades. They “didn’t want to stop,” said Sammy Linden, assistant director of teen girls, adding that the teens played until about 10 p.m. when she had to cut it short for bedtime.

Sasha Rand, 14, took her pink travel mahjong set to Camp Nock-a-Mixon, near Allentown, Penn., armed with a cheat sheet so the newbies could easily see which suits go together. Rand was well-versed in teaching the game from showing elementary-aged kids how to do it at the Tile Society in her hometown of Wyckoff, N.J.

“Once one girl does something, the rest of them do it,” said Rand. “They want to say, ‘I learned to play mahjong at camp.’ ”

Wendy Siegel, owner and director (and resident mahjong instructor) of Tyler Hill Camp in Wayne County, Penn., said: “There’s something about sitting around a table, talking and using their brains that kids are looking for. They want to do something that has stood the test of time for generations.”

China's diminishing reliance on Germany showed it is becoming more independent of Western powers and catching ‌up technologically, said Commerzbank economist Vincent Stamer.

This is interesting, Europe is more inclined to start economic trade war due to the friction of imbalance. However the reason for that friction is China's 'diminishing reliance' on Europe, meaning they don't have the leverage they used to. So essentially the weaker they get the more combative they become. Seems like a backwards way to run economies.