While a 6.2-magnitude earthquake jolted Jishishan county in Linxia Hui Autonomous Prefecture, Northwest China's Gansu Province, on Monday at midnight, another 5.5-magnitude earthquake occurred near the city of Artux in the Kizilsu Kirgiz Autonomous Prefecture, the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, on Tuesday morning. 

Analysts said that the two earthquakes have no direct connection. However, Artux is located in the Pamir-Tian Shan orogenic belt while Jishishan is located in the Qilian Mountains-Qinling orogenic belt, so both regions are affected by the northward subduction of the Indian Plate, which results in strong tectonic activity on the Qinghai-Xizang Plateau.

Experts have called for increased proactive efforts to alleviate earthquakes' impact, such as promoting the mapping of China's seismic zones and increasing public understanding of disaster reduction and prevention.

As of press time, the earthquake in Gansu has caused 113 local deaths and 14 deaths in the adjacent Qinghai Province. Full-scale rescue efforts are being conducted, according to a press conference on Tuesday. Meanwhile, there have been no reports of any casualties or property damage from the one in Artux in Xinjiang. 

Jishishan county in Gansu Province is located on the eastern edge of the Qinghai-Xizang Plateau, which is part of the North-South seismic zone. The earthquake was a reverse fault earthquake with the fault along the northwestern ridge of Laji Mountain, Xu Xiwei, director of the National Institute of Natural Hazards and also professor at the China University of Geosciences, told the Global Times. 

China is located on the Eurasian Plate, with the southern part being squeezed by the Indian Ocean Plate, and the Pacific Plate subducting westward, squeezing the central and eastern regions of the country. China is simultaneously affected by the compression of the three major plates, with active faults in some areas. The Qinghai-Xizang Plateau and Xinjiang are located in the forefront of the collision between the Indian Ocean Plate and the Eurasian Plate, according to Xu.

There is no direct connection between the two earthquakes that happened in Gansu and Xinjiang. In terms of geological structure, Gansu and Xinjiang are both located on the North-South seismic belt while occasional earthquakes are a normal part of crustal energy release, Wang Tun, head of a key earthquake early warning laboratory in China's Sichuan Province, told the Global Times.

Xu noted that the major reasons for the casualties in the Jishishan earthquake are due to various factors, including the relatively dense population in the affected areas, and people being asleep during late night, making them unable to take cover in time. 

He noted that more basic work for earthquake disaster prevention should be carried out, including promoting the mapping of active faults in China to provide a scientific basis for urban planning, construction, and seismic design of engineering projects. Buildings should also be constructed away from active fault lines, avoid steep slope areas and incorporate enhanced seismic resistance facilities.

Moreover, public awareness of earthquake prevention and disaster reduction should be improved to reduce casualties during disasters, said Xu. 

For the past two decades, China has worked to strengthen earthquake resistance capacity of rural areas. Wang noted that Gansu and Sichuan also fall within the scope of this improvement drive, with buildings in many areas seeing improved earthquake resistance compared to the past. However, the earthquake in Gansu shows that more efforts should be made in this field.

In recent years, China has also strengthened the issuance of earthquake early warnings to the public through television, mobile phones, loudspeakers, and other means. The Earthquake Early Warning System, jointly developed by the Institute of Care-life and the China Earthquake Administration, issued early warnings for this earthquake, providing warning to the Linxia Hui Autonomous Prefecture located 56 kilometers from the epicenter 12 seconds before the quake, and more than 20 seconds in adjacent regions, including Gansu's capital city Lanzhou. 

This earthquake is the 80th destructive earthquake successfully predicted by the Earthquake Early Warning System since 2011. Wang said that promoting earthquake early warning services is also an important way to reduce casualties in disasters.

Team China suffered a defeat against the top-ranked South Korean team with a score of 27-30 in women's épée team semifinal of the fencing event at the 19th Asian Games held in Hangzhou, East China's Zhejiang Province, on Wednesday. Despite only collecting a bronze medal, Olympic champion Sun Yiwen, a 31-year-old veteran, wasn't discouraged. 

This team event marked the first time Sun led a new lineup consisting of young athletes Xu Nuo, Shi Yuexin and Tang Junyao. In a post-match interview, Sun said that the competition was a great learning experience. She and her teammates gained confidence and hope from playing at this level, and they will continue to work hard in future Olympic qualification events.

On Sunday, the first official competition day of the Hangzhou Asian Games, Sun faced the top-seeded South Korean fencer Song Sera in the quarterfinals of the women's épée individual event. 

Despite a string of disappointing defeats, Sun remained composed and even smiled throughout the interview session in the mixed zone after the match.

On her third trip to the Asian Games, Sun is the only Olympic champion in the Chinese fencing team. Reflecting on the experience, she said, "Among the three Asian Games I have participated in, this one is particularly memorable. It is a competition held on home soil, and it is also the last edition of the Asian Games."

At the Tokyo Olympics, Sun became the first Chinese fencer in history to win the Olympic individual women's épée competition's top laurel. 

But the win came with a price. Sun suffered caudal vertebrae and knee injuries. It was not until October 2022 that she was able to resume training. In an interview following her return, Sun said the injuries had had a great impact on her career, adding that she had also made some mistakes after her return to sports. 

Despite all that, Sun has put up an impressive performance at the Hangzhou Games. 

Looking ahead to the Paris 2024 Olympics, Sun expressed her desire to stand on the podium once again. "In a sport like fencing, especially women's sabre, there is only one person who has won two championships, and two or three people have stood on the podium twice in a row. I believe I can continue to compete and hope to break through myself," she said.

The Games have also witnessed the final battles of several legendary veterans, such as 48-year-old Uzbekistani gymnast Oksana Chusovitina and 34-year-old table tennis great Ma Long.

Reminiscing on a career that has featured both ups and downs, Sun's goal isn't just about getting more medals anymore. She has set her eyes on inspiring younger Chinese athletes through her story and experience. 

"As a veteran, compared with young athletes, I can bear more. In addition to injuries, I also have to overcome difficulties such as slow recovery caused by age. However, luckily, I have the ability to stay in the team and help young players grow faster with rich competition experience," Sun said. 

"No matter what difficulties I encounter, I will never give up."

On Thursday afternoon, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs once again expressed its strong opposition after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) hastily released the comprehensive assessment report on the dump plan of nuclear-contaminated wastewater of Japan's Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.

Wang Wenbin, the spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs further reiterated three points at a press conference on Thursday. Firstly, Japan focuses more on saving cost instead of safeguarding marine environment and protecting people's life and health. Second, Japan did not have full consultation with the international community especially with stakeholders. Third, the dumping plan is a gamble with no precedent and it is full of uncertainties.

After the IAEA released its assessment report on Tuesday, relevant government ministries in China expressed strong opposition.

China's Ministry of Ecology and Environment (National Nuclear Safety Administration) said it has deployed environmental monitoring for marine radiation levels and will issue an early warning in time to effectively safeguard the interests of the country and the public health in case of any abnormalities.

Deng Ge, secretary general of the China Atomic Energy Authority (CAEA) told the media on Tuesday that the safety report by the IAEA on the Japanese government's plan to dump Fukushima nuclear-contaminated wastewater failed to fully reflect the opinions of all experts involved in the review and the conclusions were limited and biased.

Liu Senlin, an expert with the CAEA, who participated in the IAEA's technical working group for the assessment, said that the report, released in the name of the IAEA director general, was released without sufficient consultation with the experts in the technical working group.

He believes that the report released by the IAEA does not represent the IAEA's recognition of the legitimacy of Japan's decision to dump the treated wastewater into the ocean, nor does it represent the IAEA's approval or authorization of Japan's dump of nuclear-contaminated wastewater.

According to media reports, the Japanese government plans to start the release of treated radioactive wastewater from the defunct Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant as early as this August, bolstered by the IAEA's latest report to greenlight its plan.

Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Wednesday announced that competent departments of the Chinese government will enhance marine environment monitoring and strengthen inspection and quarantine of imported seafood and other products to safeguard people's health and food safety.

Although the IAEA said the plan "meets safety standards," the public, including local fishermen in Japan, and people in neighboring countries remain skeptical and their unease has not subsided. For example, around 33,000 people from Fukushima, Iwate and Miyagi in Japan have signed a petition protesting the dumping of nuclear-contaminated wastewater into the ocean, making a total of 254,000 signatures collected in these places since 2022 urging the Japanese government to suspend the plan, Japan's Kyodo News reported. Many in Seoul, South Korea also gathered Wednesday in the central Gwanghwamun square to protest Japan's dumping plan despite the IAEA's endorsement, South Korean media reported, noting that the protest has continued for weeks.

In response to Japan's decision to discharge nuclear-contaminated wastewater from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the sea, the Global Times has produced a series of cartoons condemning Japan's irresponsible behavior from different perspectives, such as public opposition, the radioactive contamination to marine organisms, and the Japanese government's selfish behavior against the global community.

Standing on the observation platform of the Jawa 7 coal-fired Power Plant in Indonesia, one enjoys a panoramic view of the lush and vibrant mangrove forest, where numerous marine birds frolic and mate. It is difficult to associate this idyllic scene with the image of a traditional power plant, billowing black smoke engulfing the surroundings and causing air pollution. And yet the image couldn't be further from the truth as this is one of the most efficient, stable and environmentally friendly power plants in Indonesia, co-built by Chinese and Indonesian constructors under the framework of Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

On December 13, 2019, Unit 1 of Java 7 was put into power generation four months ahead of schedule, and the whole plant was put into commercial operation on July 8, 2021. The project, built through a joint venture between China Shenhua Energy and Indonesia's state-run power company PT Pembangkit Jawa Bali (PJB), consists of two sets of 1050 mW-generating units, with an annual power generation capacity of approximately 15 billion kilowatt-hours, marking it the largest single capacity, highest parameter, and most advanced power plant in Indonesia.

The main environmental indicators are considerably superior than the local emission standards, and it has become a model for local low-carbon and environmentally friendly power generation with advanced technology, Zhao Zhigang, head of the plant's developer PT Shenhua Guohua Power Jawa Bali, told the Global Times.

"The project placed significant emphasis on environmental protection during construction and operation, resulting in the creation of this wetland landscape where people and nature coexist in harmony," Zhao said. He noted that in Southeast Asian countries, local residents attach great importance to environmental protection and consider the good natural environment to be an important foundation for sustainable development. Based on this common recognition, protecting the region's mangrove forest has become a shared responsibility for Chinese and Indonesian operators of the power plant.

To safeguard the rare mangrove forest from harm, a series of measures have been put into action, including the planning of mangrove ecological protection zones, the reintroduction of dominant mangrove tree species, the installation of mangrove protection signage, and the appointment of dedicated personnel to oversee mangrove preservation in various regions. Chinese contractors also take the initiative to seek cooperation with local mangrove conservation agencies, and the company spends more than 200,000 yuan ($27,443.12) a year on mangrove protection, Zhao said.

Zhao mentioned that throughout the construction period, any large construction machinery had to follow alternative routes to circumvent the mangrove forest.

When Global Times reporters visited the power plant in July, the area of the mangrove forest had expanded from 9 hectares when the construction began to approximately 17 hectares. It has become an ideal home for marine birds, lizards, mongooses, and other animals. Nearly 3,000 different marine bird species nest in this mangrove forest. Lizards, otters, snakes, crabs, fish, and other species safely reproduce here.

As the sun sets, a 4-kilometer-long pipeline, coated in seven-color anti-corrosion paint, comes into sight, representing the coal transport facilities. It serves as the "lifeline" of the power plant, connecting it to the dedicated coal terminal like a rainbow ribbon. Zhao elaborated that the coal conveying system on the bridge employs a green and environmentally friendly enclosed conveyor belt, significantly reducing coal dust emissions. "It is the longest and fastest pipe belt conveyor for coal transportation in Indonesia," said Zhao.

Additionally, the power plant utilizes new generation low-nitrogen burners, and seawater desulfurization processes, achieving an overall desulfurization efficiency of up to 99.65 percent, significantly higher than local standards. The company has also left room for further optimization of emission standards.

Indonesian President Joko Widodo inaugurated Jawa 7 in 2017. "The PLTU adopts ultra-supercritical technology which is environmentally friendly and allows higher energy conversion efficiency compared to the previous PLTU conventional technology," the Indonesian Energy Ministry spokesman Dadan Kusdiana stated in a press release upon Widodo's visit.

Zhou Lisha, a researcher with the research institute of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of China's State Council, believes that as the first independently developed supercritical million-kilowatt thermal power unit with independent intellectual property rights, the Jawa 7 will be practical in showing the world that China's international energy cooperation under the BRI is not about exporting outdated production capacity, but about exporting the most advanced and efficient clean energy technologies.

Indonesia is strategically located between the Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean, with unique advantages in location, population, market, and resources, and holds enormous potential. However, the shortage of electricity supply has been constraining its development.

As of the end of 2022, the plant has generated a total of 31.5 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity and paid $45.64 million in taxes. It greatly alleviates electricity shortages in the Java region, and is also a strong driver for local economic growth and social development.

The Global Times has learned that the power plant is an industry reliant on advanced technology; however, Indonesia faces a shortage of relevant academic programs in universities and talent development systems to support it. Job opportunities provided by Chinese companies are seen as good learning opportunities for many local people after graduation. It is estimated that during the operation period, it has provided nearly 700 jobs for local graduates.

Rizka Anggraini, a local employee at the project, told the Global Times that currently, Indonesian employees account for about 70 to 80 percent of the project's workforce. After graduating, she chose to join a Chinese company in the hope of seeing how traditional energy technologies in China achieve near-zero emissions.

"We implement a mentorship system in the project, and my Chinese mentor provides me with detailed guidance. Indonesians also have good opportunities for promotion," Anggraini said.

She also mentioned that Chinese companies annually organize visits for top Indonesian employees to power plants in China for educational purposes, and she eagerly anticipates the chance to participate in one of these visits.

As the 10th anniversary of the launching of the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) takes center stage, one of the pivotal questions being asked is how the Global South has benefited from the thousands of projects it has created with China through the initiative.

An exact dollar figure is difficult to compute and frankly would be merely an exercise in counting numbers. More importantly, we know that more than $1 trillion has been spent in total on BRI efforts with the African continent, the Middle East and Latin America being significant partners. At the risk of oversimplifying the complexity of the BRI, you can travel to almost every country in those regions today and find a port, skyscraper, railroad, bridge, power plant or major road/highway that has been (or is being) constructed thanks to the BRI.

And do not forget that as these significant efforts are being completed, Chinese companies are emphasizing green construction, with, as just one example, roughly 56 percent of all energy-related projects undertaken in 2023 incorporating renewable energies. Massive projects that benefit a particular country or region and maintain fidelity to fighting climate change is a win-win.

The Foreign Affairs magazine recently noted that the Global South covers "the vast majority of humanity, but their desires and goals have long been relegated to the footnotes of geopolitics." Many of the leaders in those countries, despite not operating as a bloc (in the traditional definition of the term), are changing that dynamic. Driven by realism - the need to improve the well-being of their citizens in part through infrastructure and other projects that demonstrate economic growth - and tired of being lectured to about Western values while receiving economic aid linked to specific democratic principles, these countries want to modernize their way. And China is delivering the same message: Let us work together on developing your nation and empowering your people, and you can do that with no strings attached. Returning to the aforementioned Foreign Affairs article, these countries are "looking out for number one" and "rejecting a new cold war dynamic that pits the United States, Japan and Europe against a gathering coalition of China and Russia." 

In short, the Global South has said "enough" after spending decades as the most junior of partners in the Washington Consensus. As one former Indonesian ambassador to the US and a co-founder of an international social justice group wrote in Nikkei Asia: "Perceptions of Western hypocrisy in the Global South, compounded by bitter memories of past interventions, have made our divided world even more polarized and have pushed old friends and partners to turn to new sources of development finance that come with less baggage and fewer strings attached..."

Will American political elites pay attention to such warnings? The Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft is making it easier for them to do so. The institute recently launched a new program that targets the Global South. Why? Trita Parsi, the institute's executive vice president, said, "The growing geopolitical significance of rising Middle Powers in the Global South is undisputed, yet a solid understanding of this new dynamic is lacking in Washington."

Those are kind, and dare we say diplomatic, words. Washington suffers from a corrosive mind-set that demands turning any achievement by China into an attack on the nation ("China must have cheated") and any setback faced by China as an indicator that the entire structure is under duress ("China is doomed."). That myopic viewpoint explains why one American think tank after another wants its audiences to believe that the BRI is flawed, mismanaged, tipped in China's favor and otherwise guaranteed to undermine the roughly 150 nations involved in it. Such analyses regularly conclude that because the BRI has had its ups and downs it is teetering. Do you know of any long-term economic program that never hit a bump or two in the road? 

Along the same lines, Western elites maintain that the Global South should remain patient and resist Chinese efforts to become global partners because Western help is on the way. Global South citizens know from their history that too much of that help either never shows up or cannot be effectively used. 

The Quincy Institute is encouraging US and Western leaders to tone down the bombastic rhetoric and instead listen to the voices and ideas of the people that make up the Global South. If those elites do that, and there is decades of evidence to suggest they have no interest in listening to anyone who is not stuck in the same echo chamber, they might hear voices at home and abroad saying that a 20th-century attitude focused on Western hegemony has been tossed aside much like wastepaper would be. In its place: A firm commitment to a multipolar world, in which the best of ideas from north, south, east and west are harnessed in order to finally bring lasting economic prosperity to the Global South. 

If Western leaders insist that the BRI and multipolarity are mere fads that will soon disappear, they are certain to further weaken the already frayed image of the West throughout the Global South.

Chinese-developed technologies in sectors such as digital yuan payments and dispatch systems are in use at the ongoing 19th Asian Games in Hangzhou, East China's Zhejiang Province, providing technical support to the event. 

A "top up in advance" function became available on Friday on the digital yuan app, providing a safe and convenient payment service for foreign visitors. Earlier, Ant Group officially welcomed seven new leading e-wallets and payment apps from Asia to the "Alipay+-in-China" (A+China) Program, reported the Xinhua News Agency. 

These new additions bring the total number of overseas e-wallets accepted in the Chinese mainland to 10.

There are nine digital yuan interactive experience areas in the Asian Games Village and reception hotels, and 12 digital yuan foreign currency exchange machines. So far, 324 merchants in venues and Asian Games Villages are accepting digital yuan. Online and on-site ticket sales support the use of digital yuan.

Zhejiang has 1.3 million on-site merchants and 1.02 million online merchants supporting the acceptance of digital yuan, officials said at a press conference last week. 

The new feature of the digital yuan wallet introduced during the Hangzhou Asian Games perfectly aligns with the scenario of the Games, where there are many foreigners, including spectators, coaches and athletes, who want to make purchases within China during their stay, Wang Peng, an associate research fellow at the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on Monday.

Chinese tech giants are also making the event a place for adopting intelligent services. 

In terms of event organization, an intelligent command and dispatch system developed by Hikvision is in charge of the operation status of all stadiums, venues and surrounding traffic conditions, China Electronics Technology Group Corp said via its WeChat account. 

The intelligent command system can generate a "parallel stadium" with 3D modeling technology, directly showing detailed information on security, traffic and people movements, as well as the games themselves, facilitating the efficiency of command communication. 

The intelligent command system can integrate information on all events and relevant security, and visualize it with Internet of Things technology, in order to secure the 24-hour operation of the center, according to Hikvision.

The system displays simultaneous information of ongoing games, ticketing, traffic, logistics, power grids, weather, food and hotel supplies, and medical support for the event organizers, helping them make correct decisions in responding to any emergencies.

Wang said that large-scale events like this can greatly boost the development of technological products. "The Hangzhou Asian Games provides valuable application and promotion opportunities for China's latest technology research and products, building up experience for use in the civilian sector," he noted.

During the recently concluded G20 summit, the US and India revealed cracks on many international issues, indicating that the US-India relationship is far from being as rosy as it appears. 

As two large countries at different stages of development, India and the US have different attitudes toward a series of international issues. As a developing country, India's top priority is to achieve economic development, whereas the US is seeking to contain China and maintain its global hegemony.

First, India and the US-led West have had differing approaches on issues related with climate change and energy. India, as a developing country, has emphasized the priority for economic growth and has been more reliant on sourcing coal for its energy needs. Raj Kumar Singh, India's minister for power and renewable energy, recently accused the West of hypocrisy over energy transition, according to the Financial Times.

Second, the US and India have been struggling to reach agreements in trade negotiations. Although the US proposed the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF) and held talks with India on the initiative, India still chose not to join the IPEF trade pillar. Market access has not been agreed upon for India, which is being viewed as a crucial factor to join the trade pillar, according to media reports.

Third, although there are signs that the US supports India in taking over manufacturing transfers from China, the goal of the US is actually to bring manufacturing back and ensure employment opportunities in the US. From the Trump administration or even earlier, there have been conflicting interests between the US and India in this regard.

Fourth, the US and India encountered tensions on whether to include the Russia-Ukraine issue in the joint declaration of the G20 summit. In the first half of 2023, the trade between Russia and India increased by 190 percent year-on-year. The surging trade between India and Russia despite the US-led West's attempt to isolate Russia indicates differences in the positions of the US and India on Russia-related issues.

In co-opting India, the US mainly wants to take advantage of India's strategic position in the geopolitical landscape. India is well aware of the US' intention and understands that the US is trying to use India as a counterweight to contain China. India is also aware that the fundamental objective of the US is to maintain its own hegemonic status.

What India is doing is maintaining its own stance on major international issues while seeking to benefit from dealing with the US, such as accessing the US market and technology. India will avoid challenging the US on international issues; nevertheless, India will not sacrifice its own interests just to cater to the US.

During the G20 summit, India, in the process of setting the agenda, displayed a clear goal of competing with China to become a leader in the developing world. Despite major differences, India and China, both being major developing countries, should actively expand cooperation.

In recent years, China-India economic and trade relations have achieved continuous growth despite the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Admittedly, the issue of imbalance in China-India economic and trade relations should not be ignored, but, more importantly, both sides can see the enormous benefits that expanding and deepening cooperation can bring. Trade between China and India reached 619.69 billion yuan ($84.49 billion) during the first eight months of 2023, up 5.2 percent year-on-year, according to Chinese customs data.

At present, peace and mutually beneficial cooperation are of utmost importance for both China and India. Only by actively expanding and deepening cooperation can the two sides seize opportunities and achieve economic and social development. If India falls into the geopolitical trap set by the US and allows its relationship with China to slide from benign competition to confrontation or even worse, it will seriously harm the interests of both countries. 

In the face of great development opportunities, India should be aware of where its own interests lie and not be easily manipulated or used by the US. India should adopt a more rational approach in coordinating its relationship with China and work together to contribute to the stability and development of the developing world.

The author is an associate research fellow at the National Institute of International Strategy under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) has released the country's first national standard for blockchain technology, aiming to accelerate development of the emerging industry, according to media reports on Thursday.   

This offers a basic and universal standard to guide the application and industrial development of the country's blockchain technology, and it standardizes the functional architecture and core elements of the blockchain system, according to the MIIT. 

The newly released standard also provides a reference guide for the industry to unify the understanding of the concept of blockchain, build and improve the blockchain system, and choose and use blockchain services. The standard has been applied in more than a hundred blockchain companies.

The move further accelerates the standardization of China's blockchain industry and paves the way for its high-quality development, said an official at the MIIT, according to Xinhua.

The official said that the MIIT will continue to study and formulate standards for blockchain and deepen adoption of the standards so as to continuously improve the services level of the blockchain industry. 

China has been making efforts to boost the development of blockchain technology, which is deemed crucial for the development of the country's digital economy. 

In February, the Ministry of Science and Technology approved the establishment of the National Blockchain Technology Innovation Center in Beijing, which will focus on areas such as basic theory, software and hardware, according to Beijing Daily. The center was launched in Beijing's Zhongguancun area, dubbed "China's silicon valley," on May 10. 

Also, on Sunday at the ZGC Forum, a state-level platform for scientific and technological exchanges and cooperation, the Beijing Municipal Science and Technology Commission issued a white paper on Web 3.0, which covers a wide range of technologies such as blockchain and artificial intelligence. 

Application of blockchain in China has been rising rapidly in recent years, with the market size rising to 8.46 billion yuan in 2022, according to data provider Statista. 

In the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease, an overzealous set of proteins and cells begins to chew away at the brain’s nerve cell connections, a study in mice suggests.

That finding, described March 31 in Science, adds to a growing body of research that implicates excessive synaptic pruning, a process that shapes the young brain by culling unused connections, with disorders later in life. The new work pins the loss of nerve cell–connecting synapses on particular immune system molecules and a notorious Alzheimer’s-linked protein.
By uniting these multiple strands of evidence, the study may help explain the earliest steps in Alzheimer’s march of neural destruction. “No one has put it together in quite this way,” says neuropathologist John Trojanowski. If the same process happens in humans, the new results may point to ways to slow or stop Alzheimer’s, says Trojanowski, of the University of Pennsylvania’s medical school.

A curious observation led to this new view of neural whittling. A protein called C1q was packed around synapses in the brains of young mice genetically engineered to show signs of Alzheimer’s. And C1q was most abundant in brain areas known to suffer synapse losses as Alzheimer’s takes hold.

C1q is a member of the complement cascade, a group of immune system proteins that calls in microglia cells to gobble up synapses or cells. This pruning is essential as the brain develops. But these neural gardeners seem to spring back into action in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, neuroscientist Beth Stevens of Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard University and colleagues found. And that reactivation seems to be helped along by the Alzheimer’s-related protein amyloid-beta.

In the brains of mice that weren’t genetically engineered, injections of oligomeric A-beta, the form thought to be the most dangerous, caused C1q levels to rise. Along with this increase, synapses got destroyed, the team found. But A-beta injections didn’t harm synapses in mice lacking C1q, showing that C1q and A-beta are both needed for excessive pruning. How the two proteins exactly work together isn’t clear, Stevens says, but “they are definitely there at the right time and the right place.”

Complement proteins and microglia are known to be active in late-stage Alzheimer’s, when the inflamed brain is packed with sticky gobs of A-beta. But the new results suggest that the synapse-pruning pathway is active much earlier in the disease process, long before A-beta plaques form. “The story is extremely compelling and tight in Alzheimer’s mouse models,” says neurologist Scott Small of Columbia University.
There are reasons to think that a similar process happens in people. Autopsy studies by neurobiologist Stephen Scheff of the University of Kentucky in Lexington and colleagues, for instance, have turned up fewer synapses in the brains of people with mild cognitive impairment — thought to be an early stage of Alzheimer’s. The cause of that synapse loss could certainly be explained by changes in complement proteins or microglia, Scheff says.

Any therapy that would target this pruning process would first depend on identifying people at risk. And so far, there are no good tests to spot excessive oligomeric A-beta in the brain, says neurologist Sam Gandy of Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City. “Oligomers are invisible,” he says.

But if screening methods are developed, then the prospect of stopping Alzheimer’s by stopping synapse loss is appealing, Small says. A drug that could prevent C1q or its conspirators from targeting synapses for destruction might halt the damage, for instance. “It’s easier to cure a sick cell than a dead cell,” he says.

Overactive synaptic pruning may be behind other brain disorders, Stevens suspects. She and her colleagues recently implicated a different complement cascade protein in schizophrenia (SN: 2/20/16, p. 7). “This may be a pathway that is dysregulated and playing a role in synapse loss in a host of neurological diseases, not just one,” she says. Stevens and several coauthors are involved with a company that is developing a drug to block C1q.

Harnessing the weirdness of the quantum world is difficult — fragile quantum properties quickly degrade under typical conditions. But such fragility could help migrating birds find their way, scientists report in the June New Journal of Physics. Some scientists believe birds navigate with sensitive quantum-mechanical compasses, and the new study suggests that quantum fragility enhances birds’ sense of direction.

Molecules known as cryptochromes, found within avian retinas, may be behind birds’ uncanny navigational skills (SN Online: 1/7/11). When light hits cryptochromes, they undergo chemical reactions that may be influenced by the direction of Earth’s magnetic field, providing a signal of the bird’s orientation.
“At first sight, you wouldn’t expect any chemical reaction to be affected by a magnetic field as weak as the Earth’s,” says study coauthor Peter Hore, a chemist at the University of Oxford. Quantum properties can strengthen a cryptochrome’s magnetic sensitivity, but their effect sticks around only for tiny fractions of a second. Any chemical reactions that could signal the bird would have to happen fast enough to skirt this breakdown.

But Hore and colleagues’ new simulations of the inner workings of cryptochromes show that a little bit of quantum deterioration can actually enhance the strength of the magnetic field’s effect on the chemical reactions.

According to scientists’ theories, light striking a cryptochrome produces a pair of radicals — molecules with a lonely singleton electron. These unpartnered electrons feel the tug of magnetic fields, thanks to a quantum property known as spin, which makes them behave a bit like tiny bar magnets. But those minuscule magnets are not enough to serve as a compass on their own — instead, the electrons’ magnetic sensitivity is the result of a strange quantum dance.

The two radicals’ electrons can spin either in the same direction or opposite directions. But rather than choosing one of these two options, the electrons pick both at once — a condition known as a quantum superposition. Quantum mechanics can describe only the odds that the electrons would be found in each configuration if forced to choose. As time passes, these probabilities oscillate up and down in a pattern that is swayed by Earth’s magnetic field. These oscillations in turn affect the rate of further chemical reactions — the details of which are not well understood — which signal to the bird which direction it’s facing.

These chemical reactions must happen quickly. As the electrons interact with their environment, their coordinated oscillations dissipate, weakening their magnetic sensitivity. But Hore and colleagues show that this isn’t the complete picture — some loss of quantumness can help birds navigate. “Not only does it not hurt the compass signal, it can make it stronger,” says physicist Erik Gauger of Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, who was not involved with the research.
That’s because the direction of the magnetic field also determines how quickly electrons lose their coordination, further enhancing the difference in the chemical reaction rates based on the bird’s direction in the magnetic field. So the magnetic field does double duty: It affects chemical reaction rates by altering the oscillating states of the electrons and by determining when they break off their oscillation.

Although similar types of sensitivity-boosting effects have been suggested before, they weren’t based on a cryptochrome model, says Gauger.

It’s still not certain that birds navigate with cryptochromes at all, says Klaus Schulten, a computational biophysicist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. More research is needed to understand the details of how the cryptochromes might function. “There, this paper is very valuable,” he says. “It’s an interesting idea that’s worth pursuing.”