The Download: an organ transplant breakthrough, and homegrown Chinese chips

This is today’s edition of The Download , our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Supercooled kidneys have been transplanted into pigs in a “landmark achievement” When it comes to organ donation, time is everything. As soon as an organ has been removed from a donor’s body, it starts to deteriorate. Surgeons have only a matter of hours to get it into a recipient. In most cases, organs will be kept on ice during that time, at around 4 °C (39 °F). They cannot be frozen—in previous attempts, ice has formed, causing all kinds of damage. But now, scientists have come up with a device that allows organs to be cooled to -4 °C (25 °F) without forming any ice. They’ve tested it with pig organs and shown that kidneys, at least, can be preserved in the device for days then successfully transplanted. Read our story about their breakthrough, and why it raises hopes for longer-term storage of donated human organs. —Jessica Hamzelou If you want to read more about this story and its implications for organ preservation and transplantation, sign up to receive The Checkup, our weekly biotech newsletter, later today. The must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 Inside China’s epic push to replace US chips The gap between their chips’ capabilities remains large—for now. ( WSJ $) + How China is using open source AI as a new form of soft power around the globe. ( NYT $) + A new bill in the US takes aim at Chinese AI companies’ training practices. ( NBC ) + US lawmakers are also mulling banning the military from using Chinese humanoid robots. ( SCMP ) 2 Space data centers don’t exist yet, but people already oppose them Environmental experts warn it’ll further pollute the stratosphere. ( Guardian ) + Four things we’d need to put data centers in space. ( MIT Technology Review ) + What it’s like inside the data centers powering AI down here on Earth. ( Axios