Scientific Reports

The global problem of unowned domestic cats, driven by the cats’ phenomenal reproductive success, carries significant economic, animal welfare and biodiversity costs. Big-data research led by an expert on veterinary medicine and infectious diseases at City University of Hong Kong (CityU), has found that although more than 80% of cats in Australia were desexed, only a fraction have had surgery before reaching puberty, thus creating a “pregnancy gap”. To close this gap and prevent unwanted litters, it is recommended that the age of desexing is before four months.

The quality of muon beams can now be assessed thanks to a new technique that has produced the first known images of these high-energy particles.

A tick saliva study reveals immune responses that could lead to better protection for cattle.

Patients with motor dysfunctions are on the rise across Japan as its population continues to age. A Tohoku University researcher has developed a new method of rehabilitation using virtual reality to increase the sense of agency over our body and aid motor skills.

Autism has a higher prevalence in males than females. Bisphenol A (BPA) is a common chemical found in plastics, our food, and even the human placenta. Higher prenatal exposure to BPA is thought to increase the risk of autism. Researchers have, for the first time, identified autism candidate genes that may be responsible for the sex-specific effects of BPA.

A research group compared how crickets adapt to limb removal, revealing more about adoptive locomotion and the mechanisms underpinning it.

Researchers at WPI-IIIS find that normal sleep in mice depends on bacteria that help make neurotransmitters such as serotonin in the gut. The article, “Gut microbiota depletion by chronic antibiotic treatment alters the sleep/wake architecture and sleep EEG power spectra in mice,” was published in Scientific Reports.

An AI might soon help stroke survivors get the right treatment by detecting a patient’s post-stroke depression type, a frequently seen neuropsychiatric manifestation after a stroke that could impair functional recovery.

Researchers at Hokkaido University and Amoeba Energy in Japan have, inspired by the efficient foraging behavior of a single-celled amoeba, developed an analog computer for finding a reliable and swift solution to the traveling salesman problem — a representative combinatorial optimization problem.

Our bodies could be inducing mutations in the COVID-19 virus that activate immune cells to increase the production of pro-inflammatory molecules.

Research shows that Japan’s noncompulsory state of emergency generally succeeded in reducing human movement. A study from The University of Tokyo Institute of Industrial Science used mobile phone location data for January–April 2020 to record and plot movement of people in metro Tokyo during the emergence and first wave of COVID-19. They found a movement reduction of over 50%, which in turn limited social contact and slowed infection spread.

A research team based in Japan may be moving toward a more controlled walk by unveiling the mechanism underlying the directional decision of each quantum step and introducing a way to potentially control the direction of movement.

Scientists have estimated that the age of an individual does not indicate how likely they are to be infected by SARS-CoV-2. However, development of symptoms, progression of the disease, and mortality are age-dependent.

Scientists at Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology, Korea, show that it is possible to distinguish between left-handed and right-handed people by noninvasively monitoring just their brain activity during passive tactile stimulation. These results are key in haptic research (the study of sensory systems) and have various important implications for brain–computer interfaces, augmented reality, and even artificial intelligence.

Scientists from the Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology, Republic of Korea, discover a new way to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease by analyzing the levels of specific proteins in nasal discharge. This simple and inexpensive method could help in timely diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease, in order to start treatment as soon as possible, thus delaying disease progression.

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.

Scientists have found the interstellar organic matter could produce an abundant supply of water by heating, suggesting that organic matter could be the source of terrestrial water.

We move our eyes several times per second. These fast eye movements, called saccades, create large image shifts on the retina - making our visual system work hard to maintain a stable perceptual world. Remapping the retinal image compensates for this; however, errors in actual eye movements cause image shifts, even with remapping.

A new study reveals that asteroid impact sites in the ocean may possess a crucial link in explaining the formation of the essential molecules for life. The study discovered the emergence of amino acids that serve as the building blocks for proteins - demonstrating the role of meteorites in bringing life's molecules to Earth, and potentially Mars.

A theoretical mineral physics approach based on the ab initio methods was adopted to determine the viscosity of hexagonal, close-packed iron at the extreme pressures and temperatures corresponding to the Earth’s inner core. The results are found to deny geophysical observations of large fluctuations in the inner core rotation rate. The obtained viscosity also rules out inner core translation and provides support that the dynamics of the inner core may be governed by solid-state convection.

Some trans fats enhance a pathway inside the cell that leads to cell death. Drugs targeting this mechanism could help address diseases associated with these fats.

A cheap, biocompatible white powder that luminesces when heated could be used for non-invasively monitoring the temperature of specific organs within the body. Tohoku University scientists conducted preliminary tests to demonstrate the applicability of this concept and published their findings in the journal Scientific Reports.

Scientists suggest a new strategy that uses induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) to regulate immune reaction to transplanted tissues.

Using tissue engineering techniques, researchers are developing living heart valves that can grow after implantation in the human heart.

Centipedes not only walk on land but also swim in water.

Why some existing cancer treatments are ineffective in tackling the early-stage of lung cancer? Researchers investigated the ability of anti-cancer agents to affect early-stage lung metastatic tumors.

Dr. Jinung An explores the human brain to discover the origin of ‘human hand motor skill.’

Drugs can be safely delivered to cancerous lymph nodes via the lymphatic system and then released inside the nodes using sound waves. Tohoku University researchers tested the treatment on mice with metastatic breast cancer and published their findings in the journal Scientific Reports.

X-rays could be tuned to deliver a more effective punch that destroys cancer cells and not harm the body.

The dinosaur, whose nearly complete skeleton was unearthed from 72 million year old marine deposits in Mukawa Town in northern Japan, belongs to a new genus and species of a herbivorous hadrosaurid dinosaur, according to the study published in Scientific Reports. The scientists named the dinosaur Kamuysaurus japonicus.