Japan

Commuting time and living environment have been found to correlate with poor sleep health

A Kyoto University study has revealed, for the first time, how the body produces the “good cholesterol” that can prevent heart disease

Lightweight and high-performance framework for remote sensing object detection

Producing ammonia – a valuable chemical compound used in many fields – takes enormous amounts of energy. Researchers at Tohoku University have found a more efficient option that converts harmful pollutants in water to ammonia.

Researchers from The University of Osaka, AIST, Okayama University, and the University of Tokyo applied an innovative computational-analysis technique to clarify the atomic structure of soft, easily deformable regions in amorphous silicon. They discovered that these regions combine medium-range order with local disorder, a finding that will guide the design of more durable amorphous materials.

Researchers from the Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo consider waterflows and vegetation mosaic on hillslopes for accurate simulation of land surface water and energy status across Africa

To improve accuracy of projected flood risks under climate change, University of Tokyo researchers propose a new method merging data from multiple climate change scenarios based on specific warming levels

Researchers at Tohoku University developed a photonic router that can direct single and entangled (quantum) photons at unprecedented levels of efficiency. This may bring us closer to realizing superfast quantum tech.

This innovative technique allows for precise measurement of brain activity without the need for open-brain surgery by using blood vessels as conduits for electrodes. This holds immense potential for improving neurological care, advancing our understanding of the brain, and unlocking new possibilities for brain-computer interfaces.

A joint team has uncovered how soft, deformable particles, like cells, behave in microfluidic channels. Using precisely fabricated hydrogel particles and simulations on the supercomputer "Fugaku," they demonstrated that particle softness dramatically alters their focusing patterns, deviating significantly from rigid particle behavior. These findings reveal distinct "phase transitions" in focusing, shifting from mid-edge to eight-point, diagonal-edge, and finally center focusing as deformability increases. This breakthrough, explained by a new theoretical model incorporating inertia and deformability, offers crucial insights for designing next-generation microfluidic devices for highly efficient cell sorting and other biomedical applications like early cancer detection. The ability to control particle focusing based on deformability opens exciting possibilities for advanced particle manipulation and separation technologies.

Combined effects of body cooling and mental fatigue hinder endurance performance

Researchers at Osaka Metropolitan University have developed an AI model for diagnosing esophageal achalasia using chest X-rays. The AI model demonstrated higher sensitivity and specificity than physicians in its diagnostic capability.

Element-selective atomic-scale observations of the magnetovolume effect in ferromagnetic Fe-Ni fcc-based alloys

A team of researchers have used the James Webb Space Telescope to discover 12 ancient black holes from 12.9 billion years ago, providing evidence that the activity of supermassive black holes may have played a significant role in the evolutionary process of the earliest and fastest-growing galaxies in the early universe.

Researchers at the Nano Life Science Institute (WPI-NanoLSI), Kanazawa University, report in ACS Nano, how proteins in cells can be controllably activated through heating, an effect that can be used to initiate programmed cell death.

New research shows how faint radio signals from the early Universe, soon to be detected by Moon missions, could reveal dark matter's secrets. Computer simulations revealed how gas cooled and formed clumps through gravitational interactions with dark matter during the cosmic Dark Ages.

Japanese scholars submit a nuanced view linking diverse disability experiences

Researchers at The University of Osaka and Kanazawa University have developed a novel method for analyzing cancer metabolism, revealing new insights into cancer's inefficient energy process. This breakthrough, published in Metabolic Engineering, combines biological experiments with advanced information science techniques to uncover the role of cancer-specific inefficient metabolism.

The University of Osaka D3 Center will begin trial operations of the “Osaka University Compute and sTOrage Platform Urging open Science” (OCTOPUS), a computational and data platform promoting open science built by NEC Corporation (NEC; TSE: 6701), starting this September, with full-scale operations commencing in December.

Researchers have identified the mechanism by which a common genetic mutation increases liver disease risk. Their findings suggest that healthy choices, such as increasing antioxidants and limiting exposure to smoke, may reduce the risk of this disease.

Perimetry (visual field testing) quantifies a patient’s retinal sensitivity to light and clarifies a deviation from normal retinal sensitivity. Visual field tests generally require high patient concentration, which can be exhausted. We constructed a framework for deep reinforcement learning to train ViFT (Visual Field Transformer), which controls all processes of visual field testing. ViFT achieves the same or higher accuracy than the state-of-the-art strategies, with less than half the test time of the state-of-the-art strategies.

Solves a long-standing challenge in fundamental physics

An international research group led by The University of Osaka has developed scODIN, a novel computational tool to classify cell types from single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) data. Existing methods struggle to balance speed and accuracy, often misclassifying rare or transitional cells. scODIN overcomes this limitation by combining a hierarchical classification system (Tier system) with k-nearest neighbor inference. This approach allows for the rapid and accurate classification of large datasets, processing 650,000 cells in just six minutes. The tool's improved accuracy stems from its ability to identify cells at varying levels of detail, recognize intermediate phenotypes through double labeling, and recover cells affected by dropout events. scODIN promises to accelerate biomedical discoveries by enabling more precise and efficient analysis of complex biological processes and disease mechanisms.

Fluids may have flowed within the parent body of the near-Earth asteroid Ryugu more than one billion years after it formed, according to research published in Nature.

Researchers from The University of Osaka found that the radial spoke protein CFAP91 is crucial for flagellum formation in sperm, and that the proximal protein EFCAB5 is important for sperm motility. Loss of function of either of these proteins impairs spermatogenesis, suggesting that their mutation or loss can lead to male infertility.

【Intriguing behavior of such electrons in particular materials produced by chemical synthesis】 Unpaired electrons located at linear band dispersion (LBD) are exceptional and called Dirac electrons (DE). They are paid attention to because of the unique electronic properties such as temperature (T)-independent resistivity, as if they belong to neither metallic nor non-metallic substances. In this study, we have developed a series of new organic Dirac electron systems and discovered universal features of magnetic behavior originating from LBD.

This promising new catalyst can speed up the oxygen evolution reaction to create clean energy.

Just like litter is a big problem on Earth, space junk is cluttering up outer space. To dispose of this junk, a Tohoku University researcher demonstrated the utility of a special plasma thruster

Magnetic resonance imaging often yields inconsistent results when assessing the brain’s structural characteristics in children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). To address this, scientists from Japan have used a harmonization method called traveling-subject (TS) to reduce measurement bias in brain imaging datasets from multiple sites. The TS harmonized datasets showed significant reductions in measurement bias and revealed apparent volumetric changes in specific brain regions, indicating promise for developing a more robust diagnosis for ADHD.

With just five minutes a day of training in Rei-ho (an ancient practice common amongst samurai), seniors can improve their leg strength and build up muscles essential for independent living.