Nature Communications

Researchers at Kanazawa University report in Nature Communications the discovery that in the developing fly brain, neurons stemming from the same parent cell experience repulsion. This lineage-dependent repulsion is regulated by a protein known as Dscam1.

Ice is melting at a surprisingly fast rate underneath Shirase Glacier Tongue in East Antarctica due to the continuing influx of warm seawater into the Lützow-Holm Bay.

The human brain efficiently executes highly sophisticated tasks, such as image and speech recognition, with an exceptionally lower energy budget than today's computers can. The development of energy-efficient and tunable artificial neurons capable of emulating brain-inspired processes has, therefore, been a major research goal for decades.

In the era of smart cities and amid the global outbreak of Covid-19, connecting through the internet is getting more important than ever. Researchers have been working day and night on advancing the optical data transmission network to address the demand for faster transmission speed. An international research team has developed a new technology that is equipped with a special chip made by a scientist from City University of Hong Kong (CityU). The team broke the spectral efficiency world record for optical data transmission with a single integrated photonic chip. This allows the transmission speed as fast as downloading 1,000 high-definition movies in less than a second!

A research team from The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) and the University of Warwick has reached a crucial milestone towards developing single-pixel terahertz radiation (T-ray) imaging technology. Their single-pixel T-ray camera reached 100 times faster acquisition than the previous state-of-the-art without adding any significant costs to the entire system or sacrificing the sub-picosecond temporal resolution needed for the most sought-after applications, potentially opening the opportunity for them to be used in non-invasive security and medical screening. The breakthrough has been published in the journal Nature Communications.

The ever-increasing growth in data traffic requires more powerful transmission networks. To respond to such demand, a group of researchers led by Prof. Xiankai Sun and Prof. Hon Ki Tsang in the Department of Electronic Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) has recently revealed a way to use light to convey large rates of data in advanced optical chips. Their findings and demonstrations shed new light on increasing the data capacity with low insertion loss and crosstalk. These research results have been recently published in the prestigious scientific journal Nature Communications.

A research team led by Professor Jerome HUI Ho Lam from the School of Life Sciences at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) has decoded for the first time the high-quality genomes of two jellyfish commonly found in Asian waters, including the edible flame jellyfish. Further studies have revealed many unexpected biological findings, including the identification of hormones which are thought to be only contained in arthropods like insects. The findings, just published in the top scientific journal Nature Communications, provide references for further studies on the evolution, ecological roles and population bloom of jellyfish.

A group of Japanese scientists has developed an ultrastable, selective catalyst for dehydrogenate propane – an essential process to produce the key petrochemical substance of propylene – without deactivation, even at temperatures of more than 600°C.

Scratching the head or rubbing the hands repeatedly is common, unconscious behaviour when people are facing stress. Neuroscientists from the School of Biomedical Sciences and the Gerald Choa Neuroscience Centre of the Faculty of Medicine at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CU Medicine) have discovered a mammalian brain circuitry underlying our ability to generate adaptive responses when facing stress with strong negative emotions. The result of the study was recently published in the renowned international scientific journal Nature Communications.

Research at Kanazawa University, Theragen Etex Bio Institute and Seoul National University as reported in Nature Communications points towards pathways for the metastasis and malignant transitions that result from changes in the protein p53. The results suggest that the cooperative development of mutations in the proteins helps tumours spread and metastasis.

A small mitochondrial protein is necessary for energy production and its malfunction could be behind a range of degenerative diseases, according to study by Duke-NUS Medical School and their collaborators.

Exercise and a cell-aging drug could help cases of chronic myopathy.

A recent study, affiliated with South Korea's Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) has unveiled a novel catalyst (Pt1/CNT) for electrochemical chlorine generation.

A recent study, affiliated with South Korea's Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) has unveiled the structure and mechanism of proteins that are highly overexpressed in various cancers and associated with poor patient prognoses.

A recent study, affiliated with South Korea's Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) has reported a phosphate-based electrocatalyst of Fe3Co(PO4)4/reduced-graphene-oxide (rGO) (1) for OER, which is predicted to be highly active by density functional theory (DFT).

A recent study, affiliated with South Korea's Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) has unveiled a novel biomass conversion technology that can turn forestry biomass residues (i.e., sawdust from timber logging) into higher value fuels and chemicals.

A research group led by Professor Li Zhang, Associate Professor, Department of Mechanical and Automation Engineering at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), has developed a strategy that selects the optimised bio-inspired microrobotic swarms in different bio-fluids. The swarms reported may have great potential in medical applications, and this work is an important intermediate step from a fundamental understanding of microrobotic swarms to their clinic applications. The related results have been published in Nature Communications, a prestigious international scientific journal.

A study by The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) found that mangroves and other marine wetlands stored 23% more carbon from the atmosphere than previously estimated, which further established the importance of “Blue Carbon” and its contribution to countering carbon emission. This article has been published in the prestigious scientific journal Nature Communications. (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-14120-2)

Mice born blind have shown significant improvement in vision after undergoing a new gene therapy developed by a team of Japanese scientists.

Blocking a central nervous system protein could treat irritable bowel syndrome.

A new approach uses two types of stem cells to repair both heart muscle and blood vessels damaged during severe heart attacks.

The design boosts the image appeal of LCD-generated holographic scenes while retaining the popular flat-panel format.

Cold waves triggered by sea ice loss in the Arctic are memorized in the Eurasian Continent, amplifying cooling in the winters to follow, according to a joint research team between Hokkaido University and Niigata University in Japan.

Researchers at Tohoku University have, for the first time, successfully demonstrated a formation and current-induced motion of synthetic antiferromagnetic magnetic skyrmions. The established findings are expected to pave the way towards new functional information processing and storage technologies.

New bio-inspired hydrogels can act like superglue in highly ionic environments such as seawater, overcoming issues in currently available marine adhesives.

PhD students in Japan compete in communicating their research vision in three minutes

A Nature Research survey shows a gap in training on collaborative skills provided to early-career researchers

Nanogenerator is a type of new technology that converts thermal and mechanical energy as produced by small-scale physical change into electricity. Its presence secures a stable and sustainable source of electricity that powers a wide range of small electronic devices equipped with a variety of features. A research team led by Prof. ZI Yunlong, Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Automation Engineering at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), has recently developed a universal standardized method for evaluating the output capacity of nanogenerators. Compared with the conventional one, the new method can reflect the practical output capacity of the nanogenerator more accurately. This research will set an important foundation for the practical application and commercialisation of nanogenerators as an emerging energy harvesting technology. This research was published recently in the prestigious scientific journal Nature Communications (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-12465-2).

The captured CO2 can be converted into useful organic materials.

An experiment shows that one of the basic units of life — nucleobases — could have originated within giant gas clouds interspersed between the stars.