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With computation potential far beyond current supercomputers, quantum computers are the subject of enthusiastic research and development worldwide. In 2023, Academia Sinica successfully overcame various bottlenecks in the fabrication, control, and measurement of quantum chips. In October, the creation of a 5-qubit superconducting quantum computer developed in Taiwan marked a significant milestone. Starting this week, it will be made available online to project collaborators.
The global economy experienced a slowdown in 2023, mainly due to weak goods demand and inventory reduction. In Taiwan, despite stable private consumption, trade and investment plummeted: the year-on-year real GDP growth rate was 0.11% in the first three quarters, and the forecast of the economic growth rate for 2023 is revised down to 1.34%. Looking ahead, global inflation is expected to ease further, and central banks worldwide are expected to reach the end of the interest rate hike cycle in 2024. The global economic rebound, however, may be modest next year. The demand for electronic products is expected to recover, to a large extent driven by emerging technologies such as high-speed computing and artificial intelligence. As a result, Taiwan's trade and investment is expected to improve in 2024. Private consumption is expected to further expand, with the real economic growth rate forecasted to be 3.02% for 2024.
The Awards Ceremony for the 12th Scholarly Monograph Award in the Humanities and Social Sciences was held on December 11 on the first floor of the Tsai Yuan-Pei Memorial Hall (Faculty Club), Academia Sinica. This year, five books were selected for the award: two in Mandarin and three in English, covering topics such as anthropology, history, literature, and philosophy. It was our great pleasure to recognize this year’s award winners, whose thought-provoking books explored a vast range of ideas and challenged preexisting theoretical frameworks.
The names of awardees for the 2023 Academia Sinica Early-Career Investigator Research Achievement Award have been announced, and the Awards Ceremony was held on December 5 (Tuesday), with AS President James C. Liao presiding and presenting medals and prizes to the awardees.
Academician Fan-sen Wang has been awarded the 2023 Humboldt Research Award by Germany’s Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, in recognition of his achievements and impact on historical scholarship. He is the first Taiwanese scholar in the field of humanities to receive this honor.
TAIPEI, TAIWAN──For the first time, it is possible to follow, step-by-step and with atomic resolution, what happens when the enzyme DNA photolyase repairs ultraviolet light-induced DNA damage. An international team of researchers led by Academia Sinica, Taiwan, has taken snapshots of the repair process with extremely high time resolution and combined them into a film sequence. The research was published in the scientific journal Science on December 1, 2023.
To reach the goal of net-zero emissions by 2050, on November 14, Academia Sinica and the Taiwan Power Company (Taipower) held a technology conference on methane pyrolysis power generation at the Taiwan Power Research Institute (TPRI).
The Pacific Neighborhood Consortium (PNC) 2023 Annual Conference and Joint Meetings concluded successfully on November 5th at the University of the Ryukyus in Japan. The conference, themed “Sea Change: Renewal, Reform and Resolve in Global Arts, Sciences, and Business,” spanned three days and brought together over a hundred experts and scholars from seven countries and regions, including Taiwan, Japan, the United States, South Korea, Switzerland, Australia, and Hong Kong, to discuss post-pandemic trends in Digital Humanities.
Nobel-Prize-winning structural biologist Dr. Venki Ramakrishnan will deliver an Academia Sinica Lecture entitled “My Adventures in the Ribosome”. The lecture, a part of the 2023 Academia Sinica Lecture Series, will take place on August 11, 2023 in the International Conference Hall (3F) of the Humanities and Social Sciences Building. General public and members of the media are welcome.
During the first half of 2023, major economies experienced the consequences of contractionary monetary policies to address inflation, resulting in a global economic slowdown and weakened demand. The ongoing inventory adjustment in the manufacturing sector negatively affected export orders and equipment investment in Taiwan. In the first quarter of 2023, the real GDP growth rate declined by 2.87%. Looking ahead, private consumption is expected to play a pivotal role in supporting economic growth in the second half of the year. External demand, however, remains constrained. As a result, we revise downward the projected real economic growth rate for 2023 to 1.56%.
Human use of fossil fuels results in ~36 billion tons of carbon dioxide being released annually, severely impacting the carbon balance on earth. A team led by Academia Sinica President James C. Liao and Professor Ming-Daw Tsai has discovered a new way to increase carbon fixation, the process by which CO2 is absorbed, by cyanobacteria (so called blue-green algae). The team’s findings, published in the journal Nature Metabolism in June 2023, provide a new opportunity to mitigate carbon imbalance in nature.
For over 250 years, biologists have been puzzled about why regenerative animals regrow lost appendages at a rate proportional to the degree of appendage loss. A team led by Dr. Chen-Hui Chen at the Institute of Cellular and Organismic Biology (ICOB) and Dr. Keng-Hui Lin at the Institute of Physics (IOP), Academia Sinica discovered a ‘mechanical wave’ that governs positional sensing during wound healing and regeneration. This study was published in Nature Physics in June 2023.
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