A Tohoku University team grew rice to the heading stage in soil mimicking the Moon's surface, using fertilizer made from nothing but air and electricity via plasma. The unlikely inspiration? Gundam's beam saber. As NASA pushes toward a lunar base, it could become foundational tech for growing food in space.
A Japanese-led team has resolved the first atomic-level structure of a metabolon, the elusive enzyme cluster that hid from biology for 40 years, revealing a new control principle called the GATE mechanism.
In a 2004 book, a Japanese paleontologist described his country's dinosaurs in modest terms. Two decades on, Kamuysaurus and Yamatosaurus put Japan on the global dinosaur map.
A Science Tokyo team finds that the brain runs multiple clocks for elapsed time, shifting between coherence and independence. From M2 and PPC recordings to the Twin-RNN model and a clue for brain-inspired AI, here's what they saw in a mouse.
Researchers in Japan made a four-micrometer sphere of chiral polymer that lases in a flat ring, like Saturn. The molecules self-assembled into a surface swirl that gives the light a direction. A clear look at the first angle-selective lasing from a sphere, driven by its own surface chemistry.
Aquaponics rarely pays as a standalone farm. So how does Aomori's closed-school project plan to make money? By monetizing the cafe, tours, education and welfare work around the tank, backed by public funds.
αGEL is the Japanese gel that keeps a raw egg intact after an 18-meter drop. The same material hides in mechanical pencils, G-SHOCK watches and ASICS shoes, and now damps drone vibration.
A team led by Japan's QST has shown, for the first time, a magnetic memory that writes with a laser pulse instead of current, and made it work on CoFeB, the alloy already inside commercial chips. Here's how, and why it matters for data-center power.
Discovered by accident during a COVID-era experiment, a University of Tokyo and Navarra study found about 65% of people drift counterclockwise when walking freely. Handedness and culture don't explain it, and even five-year-olds do it.
Kyoto and Hiroshima University researchers found that grains Hayabusa2 brought back from asteroid Ryugu begin altering within weeks on Earth. Here is how the decay starts with an iron sulfide, what it means for Bennu and Phobos samples, and how Japan is reacting.
A Japan-US team from Tohoku University and the US NIST built the first working spintronics probabilistic bit (P-bit) on a single silicon substrate using standard chip-fabrication processes. We explain the coin-flip idea, how it differs from quantum computing (room temperature, existing chip lines), and how far it really is from a product.