Kawasaki's four-legged Home LEO prototype is meant to live with older people and notice falls, not do chores. What it says about Japan's stalled care workforce of 2.126 million, and what is still missing.
About 30% of people with ADHD get limited benefit from methylphenidate. A Fukui mouse study found adding a D2 drug helped mice missing the protein NSF, but the same combo made normal mice more impulsive.
Cryo-electron microscopes flash-freeze proteins and build 3D models from millions of molecular images. What they see, what they do and what they cost, as a Kyoto university teaches undergraduates to use the data.
A 26-site, two-year double-blind trial in Japan found high-absorption curcumin did not cut colon polyp recurrence overall (risk ratio 0.98), but large adenomas were about 44% lower. Not proof of cancer prevention.
Furukawa Electric and Ryuki Engineering heated PFAS-laden activated carbon above 1,100°C with a fiber laser and hit 99.999% destruction in a test. Throughput and the fate of the fluorine were not disclosed.
Divers in Shiretoko have long called it Ikuone. Now Clione ikuoi is the sixth sea angel species, and the third from Japanese waters in 10 years. A misread set of feeding arms had kept it in the wrong genus.
Yamaha releases VOCALOID7 on November 11, 2026, with an AI Megpoid based on Megumi Nakajima's voice. Vocaloid voices have come from real people. In an age of AI cloning, what is a voice with a known owner worth?
The 47th Honda Prize goes to Graeme Clark and Ingeborg Hochmair for the multichannel cochlear implant, now fitted in more than one million people. Why did a carmaker founder's foundation pick it?
Mitsui Fudosan and partners plan a data center of up to 20 MW in a disused Kobe tunnel that stays 15 to 20°C. What reuse saves, a 2007 precedent, and the open questions on water, power and heat.
On October 2, 2026, a Sapporo hospital gave the first commercial dose of Akuugo to a man paralyzed in a traffic accident. Why it took over two years, and what the trial evidence shows.
Tohoku University-led researchers built a DNA switch: blue light makes mRNA inside cell-sized capsules, UV stops and cuts it. Why the brake matters, and why pinpoint therapy is still far off.