Science

Researchers at Osaka City University create a quantum algorithm that removes spin contaminants while making chemical calculations on quantum computers. This allows for predictions of electronic and molecular behavior with degrees of precision not achievable with classical computers and paves the way for practical quantum computers to become a reality.

An Ehime University group led by Dr. Ishibashi and Prof. Asahi reported that when a nanosecond laser pulse was irradiated to diarylethene nanoparticles which show the photo-induced isomerization reaction from the colored closed-form to the colorless open-form, the ring-opening reaction was at most 80 times more effective than that in the solution phase. The amplification could be well explained as a ‘photosynergetic effect’ coupled with nanoscale photothermal conversion and a photochemical reaction. There are very few reports of such a nanosecond laser pulse induced amplified photochemical reaction in nanoparticles, indicating a new photoenergy conversion method.

An international consortium of researchers under the aegis of CMIP6 has calculated new estimates for the melting of Earth’s ice sheets due to greenhouse gas emissions and its impact on sea levels, showing that the ice sheets could together contribute more than 40 cm by the end of 2100.

Applying cutting-edge experimental and computational tools to basic science, researchers in Australia and Singapore have discovered a technique that could enable future cell therapies for placenta complications during pregnancy.

Professor Hyeon K. Park, affiliated with South Korea's Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) has been selected, as the 7th Laureate of S. Chandrasekhar Prize of Plasma Physics.

A team of scientists has unraveled the molecular mechanism behind one of the causes of colorectal cancer, and a treatment target.

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.

This study selected the Japanese macaque (Macaca fuscata) as a model animal for the fetal transfer of OH-PCBs in humans, and revealed OH-PCB concentrations and their relationships in the maternal and fetal brains. The key finding from this study is that OH-PCBs can reach the developing brain of the fetus as early as the first trimester of pregnancy. These OH-PCBs may exceed the levels that induce adverse effects on neurodevelopment.

Measuring the temperature of objects at a nanometer-scale has been a long challenge, especially in living biological samples, because of the lack of precise and reliable nanothermometers. An international team of researchers has realized a quantum technology to probe temperature on a nanometer-scale, and have observed a ‘fever’ in tiny nematode worms under pharmacological treatment. This strengthens the connection between quantum sensing and biology and ushers in novel thermal imaging technologies in biomedical research.

Professor Dennis Yuk Ming LO from the Faculty of Medicine at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CU Medicine) was just announced as a winner of The 2021 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences for discovering that fetal DNA is present in maternal blood and can be used for the prenatal testing of Down syndrome and a variety of genetic diseases. Professor Lo’s prenatal testing technology is now performed over 7 million times annually with women in over 90 countries. The Breakthrough Prize, renowned as the “Oscars of Science”, aims to honour paradigm shifting research in the categories of Fundamental Physics, Life Sciences and Mathematics and was created and funded by founders of a number of leading enterprises in the global technology sector in 2012. The awardees are nominated in an open online process. Each laureate receives US$3 million (equivalent to HK$24 million) in prize money, which is the most generous science award to date and attracts considerable attention in the global scientific community.

Scientists at Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology, Korea, develop a novel “heterostructured” photocatalyst using titanium and copper, two abundant and relatively inexpensive metals. Their cost-effective synthesis procedure, coupled with the high stability of the photocatalyst, provides an economically feasible way to convert waste carbon dioxide and water into useful hydrocarbon fuels using endless sunlight.

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.

Scientists are learning about species adaptation by comparing their stem cell-related genes.

Duke-NUS, the only graduate-entry medical school in Singapore, has joined the TriNetX global research network to increase clinical trial adoption and to facilitate better collaboration with other global healthcare organizations (HCOs). This latest member for TriNetX in Asia will provide the network with access to de-identified data from more than a million patients.

A new catalyst design enables unprecedented control over the modification of fatty acid derivatives that opens the door to creating useful substances in a green and efficient manner.

The ever-increasing workload of data centers calls for new ways to store and access data. Researchers from the Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology, Korea, have developed a new approach to manage databases in solid state drives, providing marked performance improvements in read/write delays and offloading database computation tasks from CPUs to increase efficiency and reduce power consumption.

Researchers from Tohoku University’s Graduate School of Engineering have discovered a novel iron-based superelastic alloy capable of withstanding extreme temperatures—both high and low.

Nanoprodrugs have immense potential for cancer treatment, more so than conventional drug delivery systems. Researchers have, for the first time, developed a comprehensive study on the dynamics of the SN-38 nanoprodrug.

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.

Duke-NUS spinout, PairX, led by US and Singapore scientists and investors, to advance immunotherapy biotech exclusively licensed from Duke-NUS.

Researchers in Kanazawa University has recently reported their study in Nano Letters regarding a high-speed atomic force microscopy study on a biological event that happens during flu virus enters infects its host cell. The real-time visualization of influenza A hemagglutinin (HA) has enhanced the understanding of fusogenic transition of HA and its interactions with host endosomes.

In catalytic reactions with organocatalysts, it is difficult to control radical reactions. We designed a thiazolium-type N-heterocyclic carbene catalyst having an N-neopentyl group. This catalyst was found to actively control radical reactions and enabled production of more than 35 species of bulky dialkyl ketones from an aliphatic aldehyde and an aliphatic carboxylic acid derivative through a radical relay mechanism. This catalyst is expected to open the way for acceleration of drug discovery research.

A group of researchers have demonstrated that, from seven methods commonly used to test for viruses in untreated wastewater, an adsorption-extraction technique can most efficiently detect SARS-CoV-2. This gives us another tool to detect the presence and spread of the COVID-19 pandemic

A group of researchers from three Japanese universities has discovered why the western subarctic Pacific Ocean, which accounts for only 6 percent of the world’s oceans, produces an estimated 26 percent of the world’s marine resources.

Understanding the microscopic origin of different physical properties of solids is of fundamental importance for condensed-matter physics and for materials applications. Yet, there is still a lot of unknowns in amorphous materials due to their disordered atomic structure. Recently, with the state-of-the-art neutron scattering instrumentation and molecular dynamic simulations, an international research team, led by physicists from City University of Hong Kong (CityU), has demonstrated the existence of high-frequency transverse phonons in metallic glass for the first time. Their findings also suggest that the atomic structure correlates with its atomic dynamics, providing new insight for understanding the atomic structure-dynamics relationship in disordered materials.

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.

Researchers at Kanazawa University report in ACS Nano a high-speed atomic-force microscopy study of the formation of protein fibrils (amyloids) associated with pathologies in collaborated research with Showa University. Mixing different variants of a single protein and changing the acidity of its environment is shown to result in significant variations in amyloid structure and elongation rates.

The electron is an elementary particle, a building block on which other systems evolve. With specific properties such as spin, or angular momentum, that can be manipulated to carry information, electrons are primed to advance modern information technology. An international collaboration of researchers has now developed a way to extend and stabilize the lifetime of the electron's spin to more effectively carry information.

In a recently published paper in Earth and Planetary Science Letters, researchers from the Geodynamics Research Center, Ehime University and the University of Lille combine numerical modeling of dislocation glide and results from diffusion experiments to revisit the rheology of wadsleyite, ringwoodite and majorite garnet under geological strain rates across the transition zone of the Earth’s mantle based on theoretical plasticity modeling.