Peer Reviewed

Engineered carbon-based nanomaterials can interfere with the aggregation of misfolded proteins linked to neurodegenerative diseases, offering a new direction for future therapeutic exploration.

By combining demand-driven life cycle assessment with a multi-objective optimisation framework, researchers identified potential optimal solutions for reusable bubble tea packaging systems under actual market demand conditions. The results show that material selection and low reuse frequency dominate both economic costs and environmental impacts, while durability and logistics become increasingly important as reuse frequency increases.

In the latest in a series of studies showing how lab-raised fish differ from those raised in more natural environments, researchers found that medaka maintained in more natural settings ovulated earlier than those in the laboratory. These findings highlight the challenges of inferring natural behavior from that observed in the laboratory.

Deformation texture of δ-AlOOH and its solid solution with phase H at high pressure and temperature

Invasive plant species affect native insect mating behavior

- A research team led by Wujin Chu, Dean of the Graduate School of Technology and Innovation Management at DGIST, has extended the “Dual-Self theory,” which explores the conflict between the impulsive self and the deliberative self, to reflect real-life-cycle patterns - The team challenged the conventional theory that people maintain a constant saving rate throughout life and successfully provided mathematical proof of the abrupt decline in savings during old age - The study was published in the “Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance,” a leading international academic journal in the field of behavioral and experimental finance

Researchers from the Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo break down complex hydrological processes for students with a game-based rainfall model

A research team led by Professor Forester Wong Yu-ting, Assistant Professor in the Department of Accountancy at City University of Hong Kong (CityUHK), pioneered a novel approach to detecting “differential communication”. The study, titled “Differential Communication and Local Information Advantage: Revelations from Translation Differences”, was recently published in The Accounting Review, a top-tier journal in the field of accounting.

Millions of people across the world suffer from Alzheimer’s disease, where sufferers experience memory impairment. Researchers from Tohoku University and the University of California, Irvine have recently identified dopamine dysfunction as a previously unrecognized mechanism underlying memory impairment. The discovery potentially opens the door to new therapeutic means that could reverse cognitive decline in Alzheimer’s patients across the globe.

Metal–amide chemistry provides a rational approach to controlling heavy-pnictogen reduction, paving the way for safer and more scalable semiconductor quantum dots.

Researchers have developed an optical fiber that uses laser-induced heating and bubble-driven convection to rapidly concentrate bacteria and nanoparticles in liquid samples. The method collects thousands of targets in 60 seconds with over tenfold higher efficiency than conventional approaches. This approach allows for faster and more sensitive detection in biomedical and environmental applications.

Researchers at The University of Osaka have developed a strategy to make aggregates of nanoparticles plastically deform under heating. Anionic groups are introduced onto the surfaces of cellulose nanofibers and paired with cations from an ionic liquid. At high temperatures, the cations diffuse across the interfaces between the nanofibers in the aggregates, enabling the aggregates to expand. This study is the first time nanoparticle aggregates have been thermoformed without loss of nanoparticle shape or crystallites.

An international team led by Associate Professor Kimihiko Nakajima of Kanazawa University has captured a rare look at the early universe. Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST *1) and the power of a gravitational lensing (*2) in space, the team achieved a definitive characterization of LAP1-B, an ultra-faint galaxy from 13 billion years ago. Expanding upon initial detections, this new study utilized deep JWST spectroscopy to reveal a record-breaking low oxygen abundance (*3) -- merely 1/240th that of the Sun. This chemically primitive state, coupled with an elevated carbon-to-oxygen ratio and a dominant dark matter halo, suggests that LAP1-B is the long-sought "ancestor" of the mysterious fossil galaxies found near our Milky Way today, providing a historic window into the earliest, most primitive stages of galaxy assembly.

Ultrasonic tracking in Hiroshima Bay shows that male and female black sea bream move differently during the spawning season, offering a novel discovery into the reproductive behavior of a broadcast-spawning sparid fish in the wild.

Researchers at National Taiwan University and partner institutions, led by research associate Dr. Raúl Tapia and Associate Professor Sze Ling Ho at the Institute of Oceanography, have uncovered new evidence that Antarctic Intermediate Water (AAIW) — a distinct layer sitting 500–1,500 meters below the ocean surface — played a pivotal role in a major atmospheric carbon dioxide transition that occurred roughly 450,000 years ago. The findings, published in Science Advances, challenge the prevailing view that changes in the deepest layers of the Southern Ocean alone drove this shift, and point instead to intermediate-depth circulation as a previously underestimated regulator of Earth’s carbon cycle.

Recent research at Tohoku University is providing a major update to our current knowledge of the biodiversity of a type of highly venomous box jellyfish of the genus Chironex, such as an entirely new species found in Singapore.

Researchers found that FK 23, a lactic acid bacterium-derived material, improved the sperm dysfunction induced by bisphenol A (BPA)—a chemical commonly used in plastic production including food containers—using a rat model.

DeepTYLCV: An interpretable and experimentally validated AI model for predicting virulence of different tomato yellow leaf curl virus strains

Nonprofit Social Enterprises Demonstrate Strength in Both Employment of Vulnerable Groups and Financial Performance

Researchers have developed a new framework that uses artificial intelligence to monitor wastewater treatment in real time, ensuring environmental safety while maximizing resource recovery. This “twin transition” approach allows facilities to predict system health and optimize energy use simultaneously.

We don’t have time to count every fish in the ocean! Environmental DNA or eDNA allows us to see where fish live by analyzing DNA in seawater – such as from shed scales or skin. This Japan-wide eDNA survey conducted by the Advanced Institute for Marine Ecosystem Change (WPI-AIMEC), Tohoku University & JAMSTEC, revealed hidden factors of the ecological niches that affect shifts in fish distributions.

Researchers have cracked the mystery behind billions of supernova explosions around the Perseus constellation using new stellar and supernova models.

We revealed that the proton channel Hv1/VSOP, previously thought to function at the cell surface in microglia (brain immune cells), also functions on endosomes inside cells and precisely controls the actin cytoskeleton. Using advanced microscopy and electrophysiology (endosome patch-clamp), we found Hv1 acts as a brake on actin elongation. This discovery presents a novel cellular control mechanism where endosomal ion channels manipulate the cell skeleton itself, with implications for understanding neurodegenerative diseases.

A high-resolution cellular atlas of liver fibrosis and recovery identifies two proteins, SEMA4D and LMCD1, as promising therapeutic targets. The findings were validated in both mouse models and human patient samples, suggesting relevance to human disease.

The LIGO–Virgo–KAGRA (LVK) detector network has a new trick up its sleeve to improve the instruments’ sensitivity to gravitational waves: it’s called Astrophysical Calibration and it plays a role similar to auto-tune in music production.

Obesity trends have continued to rise in low- and middle-income countries over the past 45 years, but have plateaued in many high-income countries, a study in Nature reports.

Enamel proteins from the teeth of six Homo erectus individuals that lived in China around 400,000 years ago offer insights into how ancient genetic material might have made its way into modern humans.

Combined extreme climate events are likely to become more common in the future if carbon emissions continue to rise, a paper in Nature suggests.

What if light had a hidden geometry? A new international collaboration between Tohoku University and Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light shows that the geometry behind light waves can affect how light moves and interacts inside materials. Their research explores the hidden geometry of light and reveals new connections between photonics, topology, and quantum physics.

We have succeeded in visualizing the structural dynamics underlying how the serum protein Afamin stabilizes and transports Wnt3a, a lipid-modified signaling molecule.