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Japan has earmarked $2.2 billion of its record economic stimulus package to help its manufacturers shift production out of China as the coronavirus disrupts supply chains between the major trading partners.

The extra budget, compiled to try to offset the devastating effects of the pandemic, includes 220 billion yen ($2 billion) for companies shifting production back to Japan and 23.5 billion yen for those seeking to move production to other countries, according to details of the plan posted online.

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An ongoing long-term trial suggests high levels of amyloid proteins in the brain do serve as an early sign of Alzheimer’s disease before cognitive decline becomes apparent.

A new study presenting the first data from a long-running US government trial is suggesting high levels of amyloid proteins in the brains of cognitively normal older adults can be an effective presymptomatic sign of early stage Alzheimer’s disease.

Over the last few decades, the amyloid hypothesis has guided the majority of research into an Alzheimer’s disease treatment. The idea is that a build up of toxic amyloid proteins in the brain, called plaques, is the primary degenerative driver behind the disease.

Unfortunately a near-constant parade of failed clinical trials testing anti-amyloid drugs has caused many researchers to begin doubting the amyloid hypothesis. From neuroinflammation to bacterial infection, a broad number of alternative hypotheses are currently being investigated, however, some scientists suspect anti-amyloid treatments could still work, as long as they commence before major degenerative symptoms appear.

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Researchers working for industrial development company Carbios have created a mutant bacterial enzyme that can break down plastic bottles for recycling in only a couple of hours, according to The Guardian.

The enyzme can break down PET plastic bottles into their individual chemical composites, which could later be reused to make brand new bottles.

Conventional recycled plastic that goes through a “thermomechanical” process isn’t high enough quality and is mostly used for other products such as clothing and carpets.

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Researchers at Lund University in Sweden have succeeded in restoring mobility and sensation of touch in stroke-afflicted rats by reprogramming human skin cells to become nerve cells, which were then transplanted into the rats’ brains. The study has now been published in the research journal PNAS.

“Six months after the transplantation, we could see how the new cells had repaired the damage that a stroke had caused in the rats’ brains,” says Professor Zaal Kokaia, who together with senior professor Olle Lindvall and researcher Sara Palma-Tortosa at the Division of Neurology is behind the study.

Several previous studies from the Lund team and others have shown that it is possible to transplant cells derived from human stem cells or from reprogrammed cells into brains of rats afflicted by stroke. However, it was not known whether the transplanted cells can form connections correctly in the rat in a way that restores normal movement and feeling.

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DAEGU, South Korea, April 6, 2020 — Luminescence technology developed at Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology (DGIST), using an in-plane electric field generated in parallel to the light-emitting layer of an LED, could help improve the efficiency of light-emitting elements used in billboards and banners. According to the research team, the LEDs produced this way emit light in a more flexible, stable way than conventional LEDs.

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“Collisional cooling has been the workhorse for cooling atoms,” adds Nobel Prize laureate Wolfgang Ketterle, the John D. Arthur professor of physics at MIT. “I wasn’t convinced that our scheme would work, but since we didn’t know for sure, we had to try it. We know now that it works for cooling sodium lithium molecules. Whether it will work for other classes of molecules remains to be seen.” MIT School of Science, Harvard — MIT Center for Ultracold Atoms, RLE at MIT — Research Laboratory of Electronics at MIT, #research #supercooledatoms #nanokelvin #WolfgangKetterle

Technique may enable molecule-based quantum computing.

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