Held in the Hand.

Passing straight through a wall.

“I start every day pretty much the same way: Coffee and News Items.” — Richard Haass, president emeritus, Council on Foreign Relations.

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1. Alzheimer’s disease has been reversed in mice in a breakthrough that offers hope that the disease may one day be curable. Spanish and Chinese researchers have found a way to restore the function of the blood-brain barrier, so it can clear out the sticky amyloid beta plaques that stop brain cells from communicating. The blood-brain barrier is a “gatekeeper” that surrounds the brain, controls what enters and exits, and keeps out toxic substances, while allowing harmful substances inside to be cleared out. In Alzheimer’s patients, these gatekeeping systems become clogged and inefficient, so researchers created nanoparticles which “remind” the barrier how to work properly. Nanoparticles are injected into the bloodstream, where they travel to the barrier, attach to it and stimulate natural mechanisms, so that the brain can access nutrients and clear out waste, restoring healthy brain function. “Only one hour after the injection, we observed a reduction of 50-60 per cent in amyloid beta amount inside the brain,” said Junyang Chen – first co-author of the study, researcher at the West China Hospital of Sichuan University and PhD student at University College London (UCL). (Sources: telegraph.co.uk, scholar.google.com, nature.com. Research paper is here.)

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2. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 2025 to John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret, and John M. Martinis “for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunneling and energy quantization in an electric circuit.” The laureates used a series of experiments to demonstrate that the bizarre properties of the quantum world can be made concrete in a system big enough to be held in the hand. Their superconducting electrical system could tunnel from one state to another, as if it were passing straight through a wall. They also showed that the system absorbed and emitted energy in doses of specific sizes, just as predicted by quantum mechanics. (Source: nobelprize.org)

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3. With the US government shutdown closing in on the one week mark, President Trump showed signs of cracking Monday, sending mixed messages about the state of talks with Democrats on their biggest demand. Trump, who had remained on the sidelines of negotiations for days, on Monday said he was open to negotiating with Democrats over health care subsidies to bring an end to the funding stalemate, at one point suggesting those talks had already begun. The remarks appeared to mark a shift after days of Republicans maintaining they’d only consider a possible extension of Obamacare subsidies after Democrats first passed legislation to fund the government. Hours later, Trump seemed to retreat. “I am happy to work with the Democrats on their Failed Healthcare Policies, or anything else, but first they must allow our Government to re-open,” Trump wrote in a social media post. (Source: bloomberg.com)

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4. Carlyle Group, the investment manager whose portfolio companies employ more than 700,000 people globally, is stepping into the economic data void left by the US government shutdown with a grim read on the labor market. The US Labor Department’s September employment report, whose scheduled release on Oct. 3 was among those that have been postponed since the shutdown began last week, was expected by economists in a Bloomberg poll to show a 54,000 increase in nonfarm payrolls from August’s total of about 159 million. Carlyle estimates that just 17,000 jobs were created, among the weakest results since the US economy emerged from the 2020 recession. (Sources: bloomberg.com, carlyle.com)