Fundamental science from Japanese universities and national research institutes.
Why does osteosarcoma cluster in the knees of growing teenagers? A University of Tokyo team, working from an accidental clue in aging research, has pieced together how the cancer starts: an accelerator gene (c-Myc), a brake gene (p53), and a signal from the bone's growth plate. It could reshape drug discovery for a rare cancer.
Toho University stroked infants on the head, back and belly. Only the back calmed them, at about 10.5 cm/s. In mouse pups raised without a mother, the response never appeared at all.
Researchers at the Institute of Science Tokyo have created a surface electrene: a crystal whose outermost layer is a sheet of loose electrons, with a work function lower than cesium. It survives open air because nitrogen caps it, then leaves as ammonia. Here is what it means for green fertilizer, and how it compares with the electrochemical routes pursued in China, Europe and the US.
NEC and New York University estimate that flood defenses on the Rockaway Peninsula could avoid up to $800 million in losses, pricing everything from transit disruption to residents' mental health in a bid to pull private money into climate adaptation.
Altermagnetism, the third type of magnet that stunned physics in 2024, had one flaw: no one could steer it. A Tokyo-KEK team aligned its domains in MnTe with a tiny millitesla field and watched them flip with polarized neutrons, with a stray field 10,000 times smaller than a ferromagnet's.
Modern wild boars still carry traces of domestic pigs brought from the Asian mainland over 2,000 years ago. Nagoya University read that story off 93 jawbones from Shimane's Nishikawazu site—escaped pigs going feral and breeding with native boars. The same thing is happening today from Texas to Brazil.
An Osaka University startup, Endoluminal Solutions, has built a 4mm single-use endoscope aimed at replacing barium gastric-cancer screening. A look at the miniaturization behind it and where it fits in an endoscope industry Japan's Olympus dominates.
Waseda University and NTU Singapore gave a live cockroach a tiny diving suit that lets it work underwater for up to three hours. A genuine rescue breakthrough wrapped in the least reassuring messenger imaginable.
A mosasaur fossil collected in Kaizuka, Osaka and stored for 35 years has been reanalyzed. A premaxilla bone was confirmed for the first time in Japan, and the specimen may be a new species of Prognathodon, the heavy-jawed group nicknamed the T. rex of the seas.
Nagasaki University and Shionogi have found FPSA, a compound that targets plasmepsin X, the enzyme malaria parasites use to burst out of red blood cells. As artemisinin resistance spreads across Africa, a fresh mechanism of action matters. A look at Japan's global-health drug discovery and where this actually stands.
Photo blur is usually a mistake to avoid. But a University of Osaka team uses the shape of that blur to read how far away objects are, recovering depth from a single camera with help from a physics-guided AI. Errors stay within about a centimeter at four meters, with uses in robotics and inspection.