Latest News Releases 10 April

Kyoto, Japan -- The fuzzy and adorable otter has experienced a surge in popularity in recent years. These aquatic mammals are friendly, playful, and make cute cooing sounds, so their social media stardom seems only natural.

Sadly, this enthusiasm for otters has a dark side: they are targets for smuggling. In Japan, their popularity has raised demand for them as pets and as featured species at exotic animal cafés, making Japan one of the most prominent destinations for captive otters with ambiguous origins.

Asian small-clawed otters -- the species most common at Japanese zoos and cafés -- are native to South and Southeast Asia. They are classified as vulnerable by the IUCN Red list and their international trade for commercial purposes is prohibited. Yet they continue to be captured and smuggled into Japan, with Thailand as the main source of this illegal trade.

Dr. Ho Seong Jang and colleagues at the Extreme Materials Research Center at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) have developed an upconversion nanoparticle technology that introduces a core@multi-shell nanostructure, a multilayer structure in which multiple layers of shells surround a central core particle, and enables high color purity RGB light emission from a single nanoparticle by adjusting the infrared wavelength.