Category: Technology

Tsinghua Unigroup, one of China’s leading chipmakers, has hired Japanese semiconductor industry veteran Yukio Sakamoto as a senior vice president and also head of the company’s Japan unit.

Sakamoto, 72, served as chief executive of once-leading Japanese chipmaker Elpida Memory, which was established by combining the memory chip units of NEC and Hitachi.

Sakamoto led Elpida for over a decade, from 2002 to 2013, successfully listing the company’s shares on the first section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange in 2004. But the financial crisis and falling chip prices hurt the company’s finances, eventually leading to its bankruptcy in 2012 and its acquisition by U.S. peer Micron Technology the following year.

Besides Sakamoto’s experience, the Chinese government-backed Unigroup likely aims to put his connections in Japan and beyond to work as it expands its reach.

Pay back to United States.

On 24 January, scientists at the Institute of Neuroscience (ION) in Shanghai reported that they had used gene-editing to disable a gene in macaque monkeys (Macaca fascicularis) that is crucial to their sleep–wake cycle. The scientists then cloned one of those monkeys to produce five primates with almost identical genes.

It is the first time that researchers have cloned a gene-edited monkey and proof of principle for the researchers’ plan to create populations of genetically identical primates that they say will revolutionize biomedical research. Some of the researchers are part of the new International Centre for Primate Brain Research, which has the goal of creating such populations and received government funding in November.

In Europe and the US, non-human-primate research increasingly faces regulatory hurdles, costs and bioethical opposition. This stands in contrast to China; the country’s 2011 five-year plan set primate disease models as a national goal. The science ministry followed up by investing 25 million yuan (US$3.9 million) into the endeavour in 2014.

Construction of a stainless steel core paneled house in 24 hours.