On the afternoon of July 8, local time, the Vietnamese Ministry of Health issued a notice stating that an 18-year-old girl in the country died of diphtheria. The Ministry of Health asked Nghe An Province and Bac Giang Province to take urgent action to control the epidemic. Diphtheria is an acute respiratory infectious disease caused by Corynebacterium diphtheriae, which is mainly transmitted through droplets and can also be indirectly transmitted by contact with objects containing Corynebacterium diphtheriae. Severe cases may show symptoms of poisoning throughout the body, complicated by myocarditis and peripheral nerve paralysis.

Koenigsegg Agera RS Chimera combines technologies from Agera RS, CC850, and Jesko. An Agera RS platform features the engine from the Jesko and the simulated manual gearbox from the CC850. Development took three years, thanks to software and hardware integration challenges. A "chimera," for the uninitiated, is described as a mythical creature whose anatomy comes from multiple animals, creating a hybrid of two or more creatures' best bits. It's also the name of the latest one-off creation from Koenigsegg, and it's certainly apt; the Koenigsegg Agera RS Chimera is an amalgam of technologies from the decade-old, record-breaking Agera RS, the fascinatingly innovative CC850, and the awe-inspiring Jesko - which just recently set four new acceleration records. There's also a hint of Regera in here, which had some impressive records of its own. As reported by Mr. JWW, the strictly one-off special edition was commissioned by FIA President Mohammed Ben Sulayem, and both he and one of Koenigsegg's engineers arrived at the same name. Let's take a closer look and see exactly why this is a hybrid, even though it's not electrified. Three Cars In One The Chimera was originally a regular Agera RS and one of several Koenigsegg megacars owned by Ben Sulayem, but he asked Christian and the team to initiate a special project on his behalf. Around the same time, the extraordinary Koenigsegg CC850 was revealed at Monterey Car Week 2022, introducing the innovative Engage Shift System (ESS). This was based on the already astonishingly fast nine-speed Light Speed Transmission, with new actuators and sensors added to enable the simulation of a manual transmission without a physical link between the shifter and the gearbox. Like the rest of the world, the FIA boss was enamored by this novel technology, and as a wealthy 'Egg collector, he asked for it to be put into his special Agera-based project. Christian pondered this and ultimately decided to fulfill the request, in the process turning Ben Sulayem's special edition into something of a development mule for the ESS. But unlike the CC850, the Chimera got the larger turbos of the Jesko, enabling around 1,280 horsepower on regular gas and up to 1,600 hp on E85. That means this is an Agera RS with a CC850 transmission and a Jesko engine. On paper, that sounds simple, but the reality was anything but... Three Shifting Experiences Took Three Years To Combine According to a video from YouTuber and Koenigsegg distributor Mr. JWW, this development process took three years and required the relocation of the battery, new mounts for the powertrain, new harnesses, new software and controllers, and even a new infotainment system. To ensure all the electronics worked seamlessly was a challenge, but then Ben Sulayem asked for another layer of intricacy, requesting that paddle shifters be added, like in the Jesko Absolut and Jesko Attack. In the CC850, you could only switch between the simulated manual mode and fully automatic shifts, but now, the Chimera's development has unlocked manually operable paddles, which have now been added as the only option you can add to a CC850. There was also significant relocation and redesigning of suspension components, with parts from the Jesko and the Regera forming the subframe and elements of the suspension, respectively. A new scoop for the new transmission's cooler was also added, but it looks like it was always planned. Christian von Koenigsegg says this is a true one-off, saying that it would be cheaper and easier to start something all-new from scratch than to mix new and old technologies again, and that it's simply "too much work" to tackle a retrofit project. The Chimera is not completed just yet, as there are still subtle elements to refine, such as the bite point of the clutch pedal, but these minor issues will surely be resolved soon. It's an amazing feat, combining three hypercars in one, and we can't even fathom how Koenigsegg will top this in the future, but we don't doubt that Christian and his team will continue to do just that.

An artificial intelligence (AI) team at Stanford University apologized for plagiarizing a large language model (LLM) from a Chinese AI company, which became a trending topic on the Chinese social media platforms, where it sparked concern among netizens on Tuesday. We apologize to the authors of MiniCPM [the AI model developed by a Chinese company] for any inconvenience that we caused for not doing the full diligence to verify and peer review the novelty of this work, the multimodal AI model Llama3-V's developers wrote in a post on social platform X. The apology came after the team from Stanford University announced Llama3-V on May 29, claiming it had comparable performance to GPT4-V and other models with the capability to train for less than $500. According to media reports, the announcement published by one of the team members quickly received more than 300,000 views. However, some netizens from X found and listed evidence of how the Llama3-V project code was reformatted and similar to MiniCPM-Llama3-V 2.5, an LLM developed by a Chinese technology company, ModelBest, and Tsinghua University. Two team members, Aksh Garg and Siddharth Sharma, reposted a netizen's query and apologized on Monday, while claiming that their role was to promote the model on Medium and X (formerly Twitter), and that they had been unable to contact the member who wrote the code for the project. They looked at recent papers to validate the novelty of the work but had not been informed of or were aware of any of the work by Open Lab for Big Model Base, which was founded by the Natural Language Processing Lab at Tsinghua University and ModelBest, according to their responses. They noted that they have taken all references to Llama3-V down in respect to the original work. In response, Liu Zhiyuan, chief scientist at ModelBest, spoke out on the Chinese social media platform Zhihu, saying that the Llama3-V team failed to comply with open-source protocols for respecting and honoring the achievements of previous researchers, thus seriously undermining the cornerstone of open-source sharing. According to a screenshot leaked online, Li Dahai, CEO of ModelBest, also made a post on his WeChat moment, saying that the two models were verified to have highly similarity in terms of providing answers and even the same errors, and that some relevant data had not yet been released to the public. He said the team hopes that their work will receive more attention and recognition, but not in this way. He also called for an open, cooperative and trusting community environment. Director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Christopher Manning also responded to Garg's explanation on Sunday, commenting "How not to own your mistakes!" on X. As the incident became a trending topic on Sina Weibo, Chinese netizens commented that academic research should be factual, but the incident also proves that the technology development in China is progressing. Global Times

Google's new generation of flagship smartphone Pixel 9 series is expected to be officially released in mid-August, and the new machine is likely to be equipped with ultrasonic fingerprint recognition technology for the first time to replace the original optical fingerprint recognition. According to core intelligence, Google Pixel 9 series will use the same Qualcomm 3D Sonic Gen 2 ultrasonic fingerprint recognition sensor as the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra. This ultrasonic technology under the screen fingerprint sensor is Qualcomm released at the CES2021 conference, compared with the previous generation of solutions, the module thickness is further reduced to 0.2mm, while the scanning area is expanded to 8mm×8mm, that is, the recognition area is increased by 77%. This will also allow users to realize fingerprint recognition without having to point their fingertips 100% accurately at the identification area indicated on the screen.

July 9 (Reuters) - Lucid Group (LCID.O), opens new tab will recall about 5,251 of its 2022-2023 Air luxury sedans due to a software error that could cause a loss of power, according to a notice from the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration published on Tuesday. The regulator added the EV maker will also recall about 7,506 of its 2022-2024 Air luxury sedans due to an issue with a coolant heater that could fail to defrost the windshield. Lucid had released an over-the-air software update in June as a fix for the software error and a separate update to identify a high voltage coolant heater failure and provide a warning to the drivers of the affected vehicles. The company had reported second-quarter deliveries above market expectations on Monday, as price cuts helped boost demand for its luxury electric sedans.