Day: January 13, 2021

(Xinhua)09:16, January 12, 2021

TIANJIN, Jan. 11 (Xinhua) — Researchers in north Chinas Tianjin Municipality have developed a new synthetic enzyme with great application potential in treating neuroinflammation including Alzheimers disease (AD) and cerebral injury.

The enzyme, named clusterzyme, was designed by the researchers from Tianjin University through single-atom substitutions. It has been proven catalytically potent and selective for modulation of neuroinflammation. Its antioxidant activity is 160 times that of water-soluble natural Vitamin E and nine times that of anthocyanin, according to the team.

In the experiments, the clusterzyme effectively eased neuroinflammation in mice with brain injuries and significantly decreased their inflammation factors. In particular, the small size of the artificial enzyme enables it to be naturally filtered out by the kidney, which means that using drugs containing clusterzyme may avoid damage to organs such as the liver and kidney, the team said.

As a crucial catalyst in organisms, enzymes can increase the speed of chemical reaction more than 100 times under normal temperature and pressure, and thus have great utilization value in the field of medicine, such as neurology, tumor treatments and biosensors. The substance is also widely used in agriculture, food and chemical industries.

However, most of the natural enzymes are hard to prepare and store, as they show poor stability and require harsh catalytic conditions, making it difficult to achieve large-scale application.

The discovery is believed to have great potential in biomedicine, especially neuroscience and engineering. The scientists plan to improve the targeting functions of clusterzyme and to explore its therapeutic potential in treating AD and other major neuroinflammation and diseases, said Zhang Xiaodong, who leads the team.

The study was published online Thursday in the journal Nature Communications.

(Xinhua)09:38, January 12, 2021

CHONGQING, Jan. 11 (Xinhua) — At an altitude of about 3,300 meters, the headwater region of Chinas Yangtze River shelters numerous endangered wildlife. It is in the northwestern province of Qinghai, and this is where nascent artificial intelligence (AI) technology escorts rare carps to the sanctuary.

Qinghai Lake, the countrys largest inland saltwater lake, covers around 4,400 square km and is home to the naked carp, a species endemic to the plateau. Between May and August every year, the carps travel hundreds of km upstream to spawn in the ideal fresh waters surrounding the lake and defend their offspring to the death.

The rare carps feed on algae and can help purify the water. In turn, they become easy prey for waterfowl to sustain the lakes ecological balance.

Reeling from the steep fall in the lakes carp population, the local government has renovated the dams along the water into a terraced breeding migration conduit for the species.

However, the over 300-km-long access makes it hard to monitor and trace illegal fishing, let alone conducting related scientific research, said Wang Luhai, a senior engineer with the China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research.

CloudWalk Technology Co., Ltd., a Chongqing-based technology solution provider, got creative in safeguarding the endangered carps. They revamped the conduit, using medium-altitude cameras and intelligent data-crunching input into an AI-empowered watercourse.

Above the shimmering water, cameras capture real-time images of the rivers. They identify biological attributes via video-streaming data analysis. The agile AI technologies processing talent is equal to the seemingly impossible task of tracking the wild carps in a complex and changeable underwater environment. So observed Zhang Yuqi, senior algorithm engineer of the Cloudwalk Research Institute with the company.

AI technologies can help accurately detect the carps breeding quantity and ecological distribution in Qinghai Lake, which provides further scientific data support for preserving the species, Wang said.

In 2002, only 2,592 tonnes of naked carps populated Qinghai Lake. Starting from 2003, Qinghai Province launched a fishing and sales ban on the species.

In 2020, 100,400 tonnes of naked carps, nearly 39 times the number in 2002, were reported in the Lake, marking an enormous stride in restoring the species population.

China has also announced another 10-year ban on the fishing of naked carp in Qinghai Lake and rivers upstream in Qinghai, starting from Jan. 1, 2021, to Dec. 31, 2030, to boost the rare carp stocks and improve the local eco-systems.

In the future, we want to increase fusing AI technologies with the research, preservation, and monitoring of endangered animals based upon this intelligent wildlife protection paradigm to better guard the pure plateau, Zhang said.

(Peoples Daily Online)09:44, January 12, 2021

Nanjing, capital of east China’s Jiangsu province, has improved its ranking in the world from 94th in 2017 to 21st in 2020 in the Global Innovation Index released by the World Intellectual Property Organization, Nanjing Daily reported.

Such substantial progress is attributed to the city’s efforts to deepen the implementation of a new development philosophy and develop itself into a leader in innovation in recent years.

ThePurple Mountain Laboratory for Network Communication and Security （Photo/Chinanews.com)

As an important science and education center in China, and the country’s only pilot city for comprehensive scientific and technological reform, Nanjing boasts rich human resources and talents for innovation.

The city is home to 53 universities and colleges (excluding military universities and colleges), and has 84 academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering.

It ranks second among Chinese cities in the numbers of college students and graduate students per 10,000 people.

In the second half of 2017, Nanjing set the goal of developing itself into an innovation-oriented city with global influence. Since then, it has established new-type research and development (RD) institutions and fostered clusters of high-tech enterprises and innovative companies, enhanced the supply of technologies at the source and attracted high-quality resources for innovation, setting an example for innovative development of central cities.

Nanjing has established a dedicated innovation committee and over 400 new-type RD institutions where professional managers serve as partners and talent teams hold an average of 56 percent of the shares, giving full rein to researchers.

Top international scientific research institutions, including the University of Cambridge in the U.K., Stanford University in the U.S., and the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, have worked closely with these RD institutions in Nanjing.

The Nanjing-based Purple Mountain Laboratory for Network Communication and Security, a platform for breakthroughs and commercialization of research findings of national key projects and strategies concerning core technologies, has witnessed a number of major breakthroughs in key technologies including those used in network operating system CNOS (China Network Operating System) and large-scale millimeter wave phased array chips over the past two years since its launch.

The city’s Yangtze River Innovation Center for Ecological Civilization, a high-level innovative platform featuring in-depth integration of various fields including government affairs, industries, universities and research institutes, has helped Nanjing explore scientific and technological means to support the ecological protection of the Yangtze River and the high-quality development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt.

In 2020, the number of high-tech enterprises in Nanjing exceeded 7,000. The city is trying to bring the figure to over 20,000 during China’s 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-2025), when the city is expected to realize a fundamental shift in growth drivers.

To make it easier for tech enterprises to get loans at a relatively low interest rate, Nanjing has built a multi-level and multi-dimensional system to provide financial services for them. By the end of September 2020, banks had granted loans of 23.2 billion yuan (about 3.58 billion dollars) to high-tech enterprises in the city.

Along with gathering research institutions, high-tech and innovative companies, the city has also made great efforts to attract high-caliber professionals and overseas talents on its new journey toward modernization and a global innovative city.

Over the past three years, the city has become a magnet for talents because of its endeavors to develop itself into an innovation-oriented city. It has attracted eight Nobel Prize winners and Turing Award winners and 115 domestic and foreign academicians, and seen over 1.1 million newly employed college students.

(China Daily)11:29, January 07, 2021

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying is seen during a regular news conference in Beijing on Jan 6, 2021. [Photo/fmprc.gov.cn]

China is still in consultation with the World Health Organization over details for a visit by international experts to trace the origins of COVID-19, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said on Wednesday.

We hope that the specific dates and arrangements of their visit can be decided as soon as possible through our discussions. We will timely inform the media as long as we have further information, Hua told reporters at a regular news briefing in Beijing.

On Tuesday, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a news conference that China has still not authorized the entry of a team of international experts for virus origin-tracing.

The epidemic situation globally is still severe and in China we are also working to prevent and contain the virus. Our health departments and experts are wholeheartedly in the stressful battle, Hua said.

The spokeswoman noted that China is still overcoming its own difficulties to advance internal preparations and create conditions for the experts to come to China.

The origin-tracing is a very complicated matter. To ensure the work of international experts goes smoothly, we need to undergo necessary procedures and make specific arrangements, Hua said.

She pointed out that China highly values anti-epidemic cooperation and has been open, transparent and responsible on COVID-19 origin-tracing.

China was among the first countries to cooperate with the WHO on COVID-19.

In February and July last year, faced with arduous tasks of domestic epidemic prevention and control, China twice invited WHO experts to come to the country for origin-tracing and formulated the China part of a global scientific cooperation plan on origin-tracing.

In October last year, China agreed with the WHO on the members of the international expert team.

We had frequent interaction and held four conferences via video link in October and December last year. We candidly talked about our results in origin-tracing and recently we have been adopting a positive and constructive attitude in discussing the origin-tracing cooperation with the WHO, Hua said.

(Chinadaily.com.cn)13:34, January 06, 2021

A patient, who received the first made-in-China artificial heart, has recovered well and was preparing to leave for home on Tuesday at a hospital in Chengdu, Southwest Chinas Sichuan province, local media outlet Red Star News reported.

The patient, 42, surnamed Song, suffered from heart disease for more than 10 years. He could not work, and had to stay in bed for years while taking medication to relieve symptoms such as palpitation and shortness of breath.

Huang Keli, director of cardiac surgery at the Sichuan Provincial Peoples Hospital, said when Song went to the hospital for treatment his life was in great danger.

Song was in the end stage of dilated cardiomyopathy, suffering cardiac muscle necrosis and heart function decline according to Song. X-ray images showed Songs heart was about four times normal size.

On Nov 10, doctors carried out an operation to input the domestically made artificial heart into Songs chest. This was the first practical use of the artificial heart after it was approved for market.

The artificial heart has two parts. One part is 420 grams and includes an artificial blood vessel and blood pump placed in the chest, and the other part is 3 kilograms. This is the external controller, which can be put into a backpack.

Huang said the inside and outside parts are connected with a wire, and the patient should pay close attention to the battery power. Except for swimming, the patient could drive and go shopping with the artificial heart.

Wang Wenyan, director of the heart failure center at the hospital, said each pair of batteries could supply the device for 6 hours for outdoor activities and patients could use the plugged model at home.

Because there is no nurse at home, Song needs to supervise the device himself, reading data and changing batteries. Therefore, he had to receive training during the past two months in the recovery period, Wang said.

Ive gained weight now, and I was less than 45 kilograms in the past, Song said.

Huang said he expected the artificial heart could be made smaller to be put into peoples body as a whole, like the artificial cardiac pacemaker. At present, the device is about 1 million yuan ($154,900), and operation costs are around 200,000 yuan, similar to other major heart operations.