Could Synthetically-formulated Triglyceride Oil Provide Fresh Hope for Huntington’s Disease?

According to the results of an early study, triheptanoin – synthetically-formulated triglyceride oil could offer fresh hope for those suffering from Huntington’s disease. It is an inherited disorder that leads nerve cells breaking down within the brain. This break down is most pronounced in areas of the brain that control movements, behavior, emotions, and memory. Studies have shown in the past that if a parent suffers from Huntington’s, there is a 50% chance that the child will develop it too. The study appears in the January edition of the medical journal Neurology, which is published by the American Academy of Neurology.

The symptoms of Huntington’s disease begin to appear around the age bracket of 30 years to 50 years. According to the author of the study, Fanny Mochel, MD, PhD, the study indicates that the synthetically-formulated triglyceride oil could hold the ability to improve the metabolic profile of the brain at the outset of the disease.

Mochel also added that the results of this study should be taken with caution considering that both participants and researchers were aware of whether they were getting the synthetically-formulated triglyceride oil or not. After studying the patients during month-long therapy, researchers noticed improved motor skills and movement among those suffering from the disease.

The energy profiles of the patients were analyzed using MRI brain scans before, at the time, and following the visual stimulation of the brain in nine patients who were diagnosed as being at the early stages of the disease. 13 people without the disease were also a part of the analysis. The same test was carried out a month later, and in those that did not have Huntington’s disease, it was observed that stimulation wasn’t required to increase the metabolism of the brain, and it then went back to the normal level. However, in patients suffering from Huntington’s disease, no change in metabolism was observed. In the second section of the study, only those diagnosed with Huntington’s disease were administered triheptanoin. After a month of this, the brain metabolism was observed to be normal. Researchers said that if the findings of these studies are confirmed, it could provide a ray of hope for those suffering from Huntington’s disease.

China Based Food Delivery Start Up Receives Shot in the Arm with Tencent Funding

Line0, a China-based start-up offering food delivery services has recently managed to secure funding from Tencent – one of the largest internet conglomerates in China. On the brink of pocketing a whopping US$ 30 million via funding, the start-up says that it will now implement major plans for expansion over the next couple of years. William Wu, the founder and CEO of Line0 has stated that his plans include taking advantage of the latest trends in the booming market for online orders and delivery.

The trend is much stronger among younger consumers who are comfortable with simply logging on to food ordering portals and choosing their takeaway order. The demand for takeaways has been rising over the years, remarked Wu. However, the weak point in this industry, in the Chinese context, is that small and medium enterprises do not have the required infrastructure to build their own delivery systems. And the giants, on the other hand, prefer not to invest in this process either. Wu considers this to be an opportunity that can be taken advantage of.

He also said that his start-up would consider looking at location-based services that operate on the offline-to-offline platform. Consumers in China, according to Wu, are showing an inclination for online services and food ordering apps.

Tencent is not the only company to have pumped money into Line0. 2012, Gobi Partners had funded the start-up, whereas in 2014, the firm raised money from Sequoia Capital. Line0 currently runs operations in five major cities in China – Wuhan, Shenzhen, Nanjing, and Shanghai. Now, with the multimillion dollar investment by Tencent, Line0 wants to set up cutting-edge services such as one-hour delivery in as many as 20 cities in China.

US FDA Shoots Warning Letter to Chinese Ingredient Manufacturing After Noting Manufacturing Problems

The US Food and Drug Administration have made it clear time and again that it wants to deploy more inspectors in China. The federal agency recently issued yet another warning letter, this time to an active pharmaceutical ingredients’ supplier operating from Wuxi, an industrial town in China. The letter stated that the supplier had violated fundamental manufacturing regulations on several fronts. 

In October last, during an inspection, inspectors from the US FDA observed that the Novacyl Wuxi Pharmaceutical facility’s employees did not maintain the stipulated log of raw data verifying that their products met mandates. The FDA then went on to issue a warning letter to the firm in December 2014, describing that maintaining such records was a ‘basic responsibility’, and justifying their concerns in detail in the letter.

A blog in the Wall Street Journal, which touched upon this topic stated that they had approached the Chinese firm’s France-based parent company Novacap, and were awaiting a comment. According to this blog, the FDA’s warning letter does not specify the exact ingredients produced at the Chinese facility. However, a look at the website of Novacyl shows that this ingredient could possibly be acetaminophen.

The FDA noted that other reasons that promoted it to shoot a warning letter to Novacyl in China were: failure to appropriately investigate/document discrepancies, set up and implement appropriate lab controls or document GMPs.

Of late, the increasing reliance of pharmaceutical companies on China as a manufacturing base has been a concern. Many of these companies manufacture products that form a part of the product supply chain in the United States. In 2008, for instance, the FDA established an office in China after the blood thinner heparin had to be recalled after reports confirming that a fake active ingredient was used in it. Matters were made worse because 246 reportedly died in the U.S. owing to this product.

Microsoft Endeavors to Gain Firm Foothold Over Government Sector with New Clouding Computing Offerings

Microsoft is making some more additions to its existing suite of software solutions designed especially for the public services sector. The newest additions are taking place in the cloud computing domain, with the company rolling out upgraded versions of Dynamics CRM and the Azure platform. These will soon be a part of Microsoft’s Office 365 Government package, widening the existing cloud portfolio that the firm currently runs for the government sector. The news came from the tech giant last week, and an official announcement is expected to be made this week by Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft when he attends a conference in Washington this week. The company says that this latest offering is a public-sector-specific unified cloud solutions, and will mark an important step ahead in the company’s government-centric business products. 

Microsoft’s VP of federal sales, Greg Myers, said that these new products mark a major “milestone” for the company in so far as announcing where the firm is headed and how it is offering differentiated value to its existing customer base. The highlight of these cloud offerings will be their ability to merge collaboration between teams and productivity. 

Office 365 is currently being used by about 3 million users working in the public sector, the company states. The CRM suite and cloud-based platform offerings of the company will receive a further boost as the company tries to gain a firm foothold in the government services sector. While the core functionality of many of these products is not drastically different from other CRM and cloud computing products, the company is working toward updating deployment options so as to meet the specific and often unique needs of the government sector.

As Demand for Chips Soars, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Likely to Respond with 3D Packaging Technology

The largest manufacturer of contract chips in the world - Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co – is reportedly preparing to unveil technology for 3D integrated circuit packaging as well as testing in 2015. This was reported in a latest report from a market research group on December 31. The Market Intelligence & Consulting Institute (MIC), which comes under the purview of the state-sponsored Institute for Information Industry, stated that the technology has been at the development phase for several years. Now that the company’s team is in the final phases of testing the possibilities of this technology, TSMC is likely slated to launch the 3D integrated fan out in 2015.

The integrated fan out is a packaging technology that works at the wafer-level. It allows for denser packaging of semiconductor chips, and to provide an increased number of input/output connections over currently prevailing packaging methods. The technology is expected to prove highly beneficial to the latest trend of low-cost chipsets that are also more compact in size. 

The MIC expects that with the introduction of the InFO technology, TMSC will be able to slash operating costs. To do this, it will replace its existing 2.5D IC technology that is being used for packaging and testing. With the growing adoption on Internet of Things, and the massive market for wearable devices, this new technology will help TMSC responsively meet expanding demand from chip suppliers globally. The Internet of Things is a rapidly developing concept that enables interconnectivity between day-to-day devices right from smartphones to vacuum cleaners to security systems. According to industry analysts, these efforts by TSMC will further intensify competition in the semiconductor industry.

Beijing’s Modern Manufacturing Industry Taking Precedence over Conventional Energy Guzzling Industries

The modern manufacturing industry in Beijing is on an upswing, with recent reports showing that it soared to 841.53 billion yuan, with 2013 profits rising to an impressive 64.62 billion yuan. These statistics were revealed by Beijing Municipal Bureau of Statistics’ vice director Wu Wanbiao. According to Wanbiao, the profits translate into a 23.2% spike in five years.

The industry’s growth lifeline has witnessed a paradigm shift with heavy industries such as steel making way for medical and automobile manufacturing industries. Take for instance the relocation of steel manufacturer Shougang and the closure of several other energy-guzzling industries. These now account for only a small proportion of all industries in Beijing.

In Beijing, the modern manufacturing sector is eating into a larger share of the market revenue pie. Reports show that the automobile industry is gaining predominance as far as the revenue share is concerned, with a healthy share of 17.6% in the large scale industries in 2013 in Beijing. As compared to 2008, this is an 8.2% increase, making it the manufacturing industry with the highest growth in Beijing. Similarly, the medical industry didn’t disappoint, earning an 18% profit to income ratio in 2013, registering a 5.4% jump over 2008.

The third economic census in Beijing clearly shows that the number of online stores in the city as of 2013 was about 7.9 times higher than the 2008 numbers – this marks an exceptionally commendable growth rate of 54.8% annually. There has been a tenfold rise in volumes of goods that are now being sold via online retail channels. Online sales in Beijing constitute about 15.4% of all successful sales transactions in Beijing from January to November 2014.

Over 1 Million Public Sector Jobs in the UK Will Face Axe Through 2020: Report

Over the next five years, as many as 1 million jobs in the public sector in the United Kingdom will face the axe, as budgetary restrictions continue to squeeze tighter. The country’s government has already scaled down the number of public sector employees by one fifth since it began effecting these job cuts four years ago, in 2010.

However, according to the Office of Budgetary Responsibility the worst is yet to come, as far as job cuts in the public sector are concerned. According to these estimates, by the time we ring in 2020, the number of people employed in the UK’s public sector would have fallen by at least 1 million, taking the total number of job cuts to 1.3 million.

However, it is not just job cuts that civil servants will have to worry about. George Osborne stated recently that since 2010, the state had saved nearly GBP 12 billion through a freeze on the salaries of public sector employees in two years and a 1% rise in their salaries. Osborne recently stated that he was positive of reporting similar savings during the next parliament.

According to some officials, this could potentially mean that over the next four years, public sector employees will likely have to forgo any increase in their pay. These salaries, when adjusted against inflation, already show a slide by 1/10th since the 2008 recession. Concerns are now being raised about how these measures could de-motivate public sector employees and could affect the ability of public sector establishments to carry out their tasks efficiently.