Peer Reviewed

A group of researchers have demonstrated that, from seven methods commonly used to test for viruses in untreated wastewater, an adsorption-extraction technique can most efficiently detect SARS-CoV-2. This gives us another tool to detect the presence and spread of the COVID-19 pandemic

Researchers have found electrons that behave as if they have no mass, called Dirac electrons, in a compound used in rewritable discs, such as CDs and DVDs. The discovery of “massless” electrons in this phase-change material could lead to faster electronic devices.

A group of researchers from three Japanese universities has discovered why the western subarctic Pacific Ocean, which accounts for only 6 percent of the world’s oceans, produces an estimated 26 percent of the world’s marine resources.

Scientists have unveiled a correlation between high blood lead levels in children and methylation of genes involved in haem synthesis and carcinogenesis, indicating a previously unknown mechanism for lead poisoning.

Research at Kanazawa University as reported in Scientific Reports demonstrates atomic force microscopy imaging that gets around the challenges of exciting very small cantilevers at their high megahertz resonance frequencies. The approach accomadates wide frequency bandwiths, and is applicable for photosensitive materials in a wide range of liquids.

The somatic nuclear protein kinase VRK-1 increases the worm’s lifespan through AMPK activation, and this mechanism can be applied to promoting human longevity, the study reveals.

The research team directed by H. Shimomoto and E. Ihara in Ehime University synthesized pH-responsive dendronized polymers by C1 polymerization of dendron-containing diazoacetates, and demonstrated a unique pH-responsive behavior of the resulting polymers. These achievements will contribute to progress in the field of polymer chemistry and will allow us to develop new types of smart soft materials.

Researchers at Kanazawa University report in ACS Nano a high-speed atomic-force microscopy study of the formation of protein fibrils (amyloids) associated with pathologies in collaborated research with Showa University. Mixing different variants of a single protein and changing the acidity of its environment is shown to result in significant variations in amyloid structure and elongation rates.

An artificial intelligence approach extracts how an aluminum alloy’s contents and manufacturing process are related to specific mechanical properties.

Researchers have solved a major problem for optical wireless communications - the process by which light carries information between cell phones and other devices. Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) pulse their light in a coded message that recipient devices can understand.

A study conducted over the past 18 years has found differences between lead exposure effects in young Japanese boys versus girls.

In a recently published paper in Earth and Planetary Science Letters, researchers from the Geodynamics Research Center, Ehime University and the University of Lille combine numerical modeling of dislocation glide and results from diffusion experiments to revisit the rheology of wadsleyite, ringwoodite and majorite garnet under geological strain rates across the transition zone of the Earth’s mantle based on theoretical plasticity modeling.

The electron is an elementary particle, a building block on which other systems evolve. With specific properties such as spin, or angular momentum, that can be manipulated to carry information, electrons are primed to advance modern information technology. An international collaboration of researchers has now developed a way to extend and stabilize the lifetime of the electron's spin to more effectively carry information.

COVID19 is teaching us one more new lesson – to look for new-onset diabetes and other non-communicable diseases in COVID19 patients by post-COVID19 vigilance.

Music training does not have a positive impact on children’s cognitive skills, such as memory, and academic achievement, such as maths, reading or writing, according to a study published in Memory & Cognition.

Large improvements of air quality in China during the COVID-19 lockdown have been widely reported, but new research reveals that the two pollutants most harmful to human health, fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and ozone, were only slightly reduced.

Hokkaido University researchers have found a soft and wet material that can memorize, retrieve, and forget information, much like the human brain. They report their findings in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Epstein-Barr virus rewires host epigenome to turn on latent genetic enhancers that activate proto-oncogenes, leading to tumorigenesis in stomach cancer

A research group has developed a new, lightweight and motor-less device that can be easily attached to an ankle support device - otherwise known as an ankle foot orthosis (AFO). The new device will aid stroke patients in their rehabilitation, improving their walking and preventing falls.

While scientists still don’t fully understand the diverse nature of RNA molecules, it is believed that the proteins binding to them, called RNA-binding proteins, are associated with many disease formation. A research led by biomedical scientists from City University of Hong Kong (CityU) has developed a novel detection method, called CARPID, to identify binding proteins of specific RNAs in the living cells. It is expected the innovation can be applied in various cell research, from identifying biomarkers of cancer diagnosis to detecting potential drug targets for treating viral diseases.

A simple, rapid assay­­ to evaluate neutralizing antibodies that target the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein receptor binding domain (RBD) is described in a paper published in Nature Biotechnology.

Environmental pollutants threaten the health of marine mammals. This study established a novel cell-based assay using the fibroblasts of a finless porpoise stranded along the coast of the Seto Inland Sea, Japan, to better understand the cytotoxicity and the impacts of environmental pollutants on the porpoise population. The results revealed that the concentrations of PCBs and DDTs which accumulated in the porpoise are likely to have an adverse effect at the cellular level.

A research led by the Department of Geography at Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU) has revealed that the observed average moving speed (or translation speed) of tropical cyclones making landfall over the coast of China dropped by 11% between 1961 and 2017. These slow-moving tropical cyclones brought about 20% more local total rainfall on average when compared with fast-moving ones, resulting in greater flood risks in the region.

The past is often the window to our future, especially when it comes to natural disasters. Using data from the 2018 floods that struck southwestern Japan to calibrate a machine learning model, researchers from the International Research Institute of Disaster Science (IRIDeS) at Tohoku University and the Japan-Peru Center for Earthquake Engineering Research and Disaster Mitigation (CISMID, in Spanish), have successfully identified the flooding caused by Typhoon Hagibis.

A hemispherical vanadium oxide cluster has a cavity that can accommodate a bromine molecule. It was found that a bromine molecule trapped in the cavity was polarized and that an alkane molecule like pentane, butane and propane could be brominated with the bromine molecule in the cavity with a selectivity differing from ordinary bromination. The present findings are expected to be useful for polarization of small molecules and design of highly functional catalysts.

Scientists demonstrate that the information about host bacteria–bacteriophage (phage) associations derived from world’s first metagenome analysis is useful for the development of phage therapies against intestinal pathobionts.

Researchers at Kanazawa University report in Biomaterials a high-speed atomic-force microscopy study of protein filaments in the nuclear pore complex. The visualization in real-time of the filaments’ dynamics is an important step in our understanding of molecular transport mechanisms between a cell nucleus and its surrounding medium.

Proteins play roles by interacting with various other proteins. Therefore, interaction analysis is an indispensable technique for studying the function of proteins. In this research, we have developed a biotinylation enzyme, AirID, using an ancestral enzyme reconstruction algorithm. AirID is a highly active biotinylation enzyme with low toxicity. By using AirID, comprehensive biotinylation of proteins interacting with a target protein in cells was achieved when the target protein was expressed as a fusion protein with AirID.

A method that involves infecting liver cells with mosquito-bred parasites could improve the study of malaria in India.

Allogeneic stem cell transplantation can cause a loss of protective goblet cells from the colon’s inner lining, which can be fatal. But boosting those cells beforehand could improve the outcome.