Japan

Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) collaboration researchers including the Kavli IPMU's Toshiya Namikawa have created a new map of dark matter in the universe confirming Einstein's theory of general relativity.

A joint research group at Osaka Metropolitan University has succeeded in regulating the flow of single molecules in solution by opening and closing the nanovalve mounted on the nanofluidic device by applying external pressure. The research group fabricated a device with a ribbon-like, thin, soft glass sheet on the top, and at the bottom a hard glass substrate having nanochannels and nanovalve seats. By applying external pressure to the soft glass sheet to open and close the valve, they succeeded in directly manipulating and controlling the flow of individual molecules in solution. They also observed an effect of fluorescence signal amplification when single fluorescent molecules are confined in the tiny nanospace inside the valve. The effect can be ascribed to the nanoconfinement, which suppresses the random motion of the molecules.

Allowing the direct observation of biomolecules in dynamic action, high-speed AFM has opened a new avenue to dynamic structural biology. An enormous amount of successful applications within the last 15 years provide unique insights into essential biological processes at the nanoscale – visualizing, for example, how molecular motors execute their specific functions.

An Osaka Metropolitan University scientist published a review article on numerous asymmetric reactions using arynes, organized by style, and detailed their outline and characteristics. Unresolved issues and prospects in this field were also described.

To discover and preserve conservation laws in the data of physical phenomena, researchers from Osaka University developed FINDE, which uses a neural network to represent the underlying conservation laws of a system as opposed to its superficial dynamics. Experiments demonstrated that energy and mass conservation laws, spatial symmetries, and constraints were discovered and preserved, indicating the potential of FINDE to contribute to the development of computer-aided engineering and physics simulations.

Researchers at the Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo, have developed a desktop charger with voltages high enough to replenish the electric charge on N95 and surgical masks, which is required for effective use

A research group at the Osaka Metropolitan University analyzed the relationship between diet, muscle mass, and liver fibrosis progression in 136 patients with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease attending the Osaka Metropolitan University Hospital. The research group found that the group with the highest Japanese diet score had less advanced liver fibrosis, and that the intake of soy products, seafood, and seaweed was important.

Osaka Metropolitan University researcher demonstrates that social and educational indicators strongly affect the population decline rate. This indicates that municipalities that invest more in education for children tend to have lower population decline rates. Surprisingly, educational indicators have a greater influence than economic indicators, such as the financial strength index. Some Asian countries, such as South Korea and China, will experience population declines as a result of low birth rates and aging populations.

Researchers from The University of Tokyo find a new approach to successfully identify areas at risk of flooding that can be missed by historical hazard maps.

The Nobel prize winning physicist Niels Bohr once said, “An expert is a (person) that has made all the mistakes that can be made in a narrow field.” This idea that to master a skill we must learn from our mistakes and avoid making them in future has long been recognized; however, the brain mechanisms and pathways that control this ability have been poorly understood. We revealed a specific brain pathway that allows us to identify and learn from our mistakes to guide better decision-making in future. Our work is an important step towards understanding how the brain controls our daily choices and behavior. The identification of these cells as ‘mistake signalers’ may also help to guide new treatments for mental health conditions associated with impaired decision-making ability.

Researchers at the Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo use isotopically purified graphite to study the phenomenon of heat flowing like a fluid, which can lead to new heat-sink devices for electronics.

Conclusive evidence of chicken breeding in the Yayoi period of Japan has been discovered from the Karako-Kagi site.

Researchers from SANKEN (The Institute of Scientific and Industrial Research), at Osaka University designed a cellulose nanofiber paper (nanopaper) that can be used as a substrate for on-skin electronics. The porous structure of the nanopaper means that it can conform and adhere to the skin well enough for effective signal transfer and allows moisture to pass through for breathability and comfort. It is hoped that the nanopaper can soon be used to acquire electrophysiological data, such as ECGs in the clinic.

A research group at Osaka Metropolitan University has succeeded in selectively recovering trace rare earth elements in synthetic seawater and environmental water, such as hot spring water, using baker’s yeast with a phosphate group added. The phosphorylated yeast is expected to be utilized as a material for recovering useful metals and removing toxic metals, thereby contributing to the realization of a metal resource-circulating society.

Osaka Metropolitan University scientists have developed a theory to experimentally determine differences in nuclear structure. Using this method to assess carbon and oxygen nuclei revealed that they contain more components in their cluster structure than in their shell structure. This enables visualization of nuclear structures without large-scale numerical calculations, which are expected to be applied to heavier nuclei in the future. This suggests that the method could be used to solve the ultimate question in nuclear physics: where did the elements we see around us come from?”

A tiny platform empowers scientists to examine how gut and liver cells interact in health and disease.

Researchers from the Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo, find that a deep-learning model that simultaneously learns to classify satellite data as rain/no-rain while determining rain intensity outperforms other models.

Osaka Metropolitan University scientists analyzed each element of the neutrino mass matrix belonging to leptons and showed theoretically that the intergenerational mixing of lepton flavors is large. Furthermore, by using the mathematics of random matrix theory, the research team was able to prove, as much as is possible at this stage, why the calculation of the squared difference of the neutrino masses are in close agreement with the experimental results in the case of the seesaw model with the random Dirac and Majorana matrices. The results of this research are expected to contribute to the further development of particle theory research, which largely remains a mystery.

We sat down with Dr. Ji Ha Lee to get to know her and her work on developing recyclable and degradable gels that can replace plastics as well as nanogels that can help with targeted drug delivery.

Researchers from Osaka University found that the COMMD3/8 complex is implicated in the progression of the autoimmune response in a mouse model of rheumatoid arthritis. They identified celastrol, the active compound of a medicinal herb, as an inhibitor of the COMMD3/8 complex. Celastrol blocked the progression of rheumatoid arthritis. Thus, celastrol is a potential lead for developing treatments against rheumatoid arthritis.

An international team including Kavli IPMU has measured a value for the “clumpiness” of the universe’s dark matter, which aligns with values that other gravitational lensing surveys have found in looking at the relatively recent universe — but it does not align with the value of 0.83 derived from the Cosmic Microwave Background.

Marine predators have expanded their ranges into the Arctic waters over the last twenty years, driven by climate change and associated increases in productivity.

Researchers from Osaka Metropolitan University Graduate School of Medicine conducted an interoperative comparison of lateral disc meniscus injuries of young patients (aged 15 or less), that were treated with plastic sutures or subtotal resection, to see if there was a difference in postoperative cartilage degeneration. The research group observed that sub-total meniscectomies were more likely to show cartilage degeneration, being worst in lateral disc meniscus injuries. In addition, they found that even with higher levels of meniscus damage, preserving the meniscus with sutures was more effective in protecting the cartilage in young patients.

Osaka Metropolitan University scientists have developed a process using artificial photosynthesis to successfully convert more than 60% of waste acetone into 3-hydroxybutyrate, a material used to manufacture biodegradable plastic. The results were obtained using low-concentration CO2, equivalent to exhaust gas, and powered by light equivalent to sunlight for 24 hours. The researchers expect that this innovative way of producing biodegradable plastic could not only reduce CO2 emissions but also provide a way of reusing laboratory and industrial waste acetone.

Researchers at Kanazawa University report in JACS Au how they have developed operando scanning ion conductance microscopy to allow simultaneous measurements of changes in the anode surface topography of a lithium ion battery during use, as well as the varying ion concentration with depth. Combining both types of information should help researchers evaluate the correlation between the two to design better batteries.

A research group at Osaka Metropolitan University has succeeded in simply creating an artificial metalloenzyme with the common metal-binding motif 2-his-1-carboxylate, which is found in natural non-heme metalloenzymes. They created a library of 12 different proteins and screened the library and found that the H52A/H58E variant had the best stereoselectivity. It is expected that this research can be expanded to produce a variety of biocatalysts that work under mild conditions.

A group including Osaka Metropolitan University researchers discovered that the rhodopsin—a protein in the eye that detects light—of whale sharks has changed to efficiently detect blue light, which penetrates deep-sea water easily. The amino acid substitutions–one of which is counterintuitively associated with congenital stationary night blindness in humans—aid in detecting the low levels of light in the deep-sea. Although these changes make the whale shark rhodopsin less thermally stable the deep-sea temperature, allows their rhodopsin to keep working. This suggests that the unique adaptation evolved to function in the low-light low-temperature environment where whale sharks live.

Cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs) are key factors in the tumor microenvironment, which have been implicated in cancer cell progression. It has also been reported that vesicles called exosomes produced by these CAFs play an important role in cancer progression. An Osaka Metropolitan University research group investigated the effect of CAF-derived exosomes on the growth of malignant melanoma cells. They found that CAF-derived exosomes express CD9 and CD63 transmembrane proteins, and that the CD9-positive exosomes may inhibit the growth of malignant melanoma cells.

An Osaka Metropolitan University joint research group has discovered that near-infrared absorbing dyes, which had previously been considered to have closed-shell electronic structures, have an intermediate electronic structure, between closed- and open-shell structures. They also found that as the wavelength of near-infrared light that can be absorbed becomes longer the contribution of open-shell forms increases within the dye. These newly discovered characteristics are expected to be utilized to develop new near-infrared absorbing dyes that can absorb longer wavelength near-infrared light.

Researchers from Osaka University have found that repeated high-dose treatment, known as pulse therapy, with the steroid methylprednisolone reduces in-hospital deaths in COVID-19 patients who receive invasive mechanical ventilation, but not in patients who don’t receive invasive mechanical ventilation. These findings were only possible using appropriate statistical methods to remove bias from the data, which originally seemed to show that the opposite was true. These results can improve patient treatment and reduce COVID-19-related deaths worldwide.