Charts: Apple Suppliers by Countries

Source : Nikkei

Chart: AI Startups Lead China’s Unicorn Herd

China currently has 369 unicorns worth an estimated $1.4 trillion in total, according to a new report.

The largest number of unicorns — privately held companies with a valuation of more than $1 billion — are in the AI sector, boasting 52 in total, according to the China Unicorn Enterprise Development Report released at the Zhongguancun Forum in Beijing on Sunday.

Source : Caixin

Chart: U.S. Wages Have Outpaced Inflation Since 2020

Source : The Big Picture

Chuckles of the Day

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Infographic: AI Patents by Country

Source : Visual Capitalist

Research: ‘Super Agers’ Have Incredibly Sharp Memories

Olivia Hebert wrote . . . . . . . . .

Super-ager octogenarians have been found to have incredibly sharp memories similar to people decades younger than themselves, say researchers.

According to a new study published in the Journal of Neuroscience, the brains of super-agers indicate that they have less brain atrophy compared to many of their peers. The research was conducted on 119 octogenarians from Spain, specifically looking at 64 super-agers and 55 older adults with normal memory abilities for their age.

Each participant completed a variety of tests that assessed their memory, motor, and verbal skills. They also underwent brain scans and blood draws and were given questionnaires to complete about their everyday habits and lifestyle.

The super-agers and the control group both showed fewer signs of Alzheimer’s disease in their brains, but the super-agers had more volume in areas of the brain important for memory.

The front of the brain also exhibited better connectivity between the areas that are key to cognitive recognition. Dr Bryan Strange – the lead researcher and a professor who studies clinical neuroscience at the Polytechnic University of Madrid – noted that although there were similarities between both groups, there were striking differences.

“By having two groups that have low levels of Alzheimer’s markers, but striking cognitive differences and striking differences in their brain,” Dr Strange told the New York Times. “Then we’re really speaking to a resistance to age-related decline.”

A separate study conducted by Northwestern that backs up Dr Strange’s teams’ claims showed that super-agers possessed more youthful brains than their peers. Their brains resembled that of 50- or 60-year-olds’ brains rather than those of their fellow octogenarians. After checking on the brains of super-agers for a couple of years, the researchers found that their brains deteriorated less than the average person their age.

Lead Northwestern study researcher Dr Emily Rogalski – a professor of neurology at the University of Chicago – noted that super-agers are easy to identify in person. She said, “They are really quite energetic people, you can see. Motivated, on the ball, elderly individuals.”

Super-agers tended to exhibit better physical health, with healthier levels of blood pressure and higher metabolisms. They also excelled at a higher rate when completing mobility tests compared to their peers. They also had noticeably better mental health.

Dr Rogalski added that one pattern she noticed among super-agers was that they tended to have a strong sense of community as well as boast healthy social relationships. However, members of her team stressed that there were variations in diet, exercise, substance use, and more that warranted more research.

“In an ideal world, you’d find out that, like, all the super-agers, you know, ate six tomatoes every day and that was the key,” assistant researcher Tessa Harrison from UC Berkeley said. However, she noted that there must be “some sort of lucky predisposition or some resistance mechanism in the brain that’s on the molecular level that we don’t understand yet.”

Whether it’s more or less exercise, to eat a Mediterranean or a keto diet, scientists have not cracked the code, but they are closer than ever.

Source : Yahoo!

Mapped: The State of World Press Freedom

Source : Statista

Japan’s Debt Dilemma May Doom Any FX Intervention

Anya Andrianova wrote . . . . . . . . .

To Robin Brooks, the former chief currency strategist at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Japan’s massive government debt — for now at least — is likely to doom any efforts to prop up the yen.

That debt has swelled to the equivalent of more than 250% of the nation’s economy, more than any of its peers, according to data from the International Monetary Fund. And, he says, that’s given the Bank of Japan a strong incentive to keep interest rates low to hold down the government’s costs.

The upshot: Barring a change in policy, that’s going to counteract any efforts to drive up the value of the yen, which is being dragged down by Japan’s adherence to the sort of rock-bottom interest rates that the US abandoned two years ago.

“This is really about debt — too much debt and that is forcing Japan into a very tough situation, keeping interest rates low and therefore transferring that fiscal distress onto the yen,” said Brooks, who is now a fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “You can use your central bank to keep interest rates low even if you have a lot of debt. So Japan has been doing that and Europe has been doing it, but there are consequences.”

The consequences for Japan have been a sharply weaker yen, which has lost more than a quarter of its value against the US dollar since March 2022, when the Federal Reserve started raising rates in the US. On Monday, there was speculation that the Japanese government intervened to support the currency for the first time since 2022 when it rebounded from a 34-year low.

There are doubts about how effective such steps will be, however, given the bigger countervailing pressures.

While the BOJ has allowed rates to edge above zero, 10-year Japanese bonds still yield only about 0.9%, compared with 4.6% for US Treasuries, giving investors a strong incentive to sell the yen and buy dollars so they can’t invest in the US instead.

The BOJ is also continuing to buy government bonds through so-called quantitative easing, a step to inject cash into the financial system that the Fed has been rolling back. Brooks said that easing is effectively countering any impact to prop up the currency.

“The BOJ should tighten by allowing the 10-year JGB yield to go higher and then [Ministry of Finance] intervention would be more effective,” he said. “That’s what’s missing.”

Brooks joined the Brookings Institution after being chief economist at the Institute of International Finance and the chief FX strategist at Goldman Sachs before that. He became a viral sensation in Brazil over his winning call on the Brazilian real in 2022.

This year so far, the yen was the worst performer among developed nations against the US dollar, shedding nearly 10% in value.

“It is entirely of their own making, it’s an unwillingness to bring debt down,” he said. “Where this is interesting is that it challenges the narrative that fiscal space for advanced economies is unlimited.”

Source : Yahoo!