An Osaka Metropolitan University-led team of researchers identified raccoons as the probable reservoir of the cytolethal distending toxin (cdt) gene-positive Providencia strains in Japan.

While a comprehensive cure-all to these neurological conditions is unlikely, scientists are making headway into understanding their fundamental characteristics with the hope of preventing or alleviating cognitive and motor impairments. In a new study published in Science Advances, researchers from the Molecular Neuroscience Unit and the former Cellular and Molecular Synaptic Function Unit at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) have now discovered that ATP, which is most commonly thought of as the ‘fuel’ of our cells, plays a surprising role in relation to neurodegenerative diseases.

Studying the charge behavior inside multi-layered organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) is crucial to improve the efficiency and lifetime of such devices. But, this is extremely challenging to examine under operating conditions. To address this, researchers from Chiba University, Japan, used electronic sum-frequency generation (ESFG) spectroscopy to investigate interface-specific charge behavior inside OLEDs under light-emitting conditions and reported ESFG as a non-invasive and innovative method to observe electric-field formation in OLEDs.

Kyoto, Japan -- Smartphones may often feel like a source of stress, feeding us an endless stream of bad news and social comparison. But what if they could also be the solution?

A team of researchers from Kyoto University believes they can be. The team has developed a smartphone app that delivers core techniques of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT)—a proven treatment for depression and anxiety—straight into the hands of users, and tested it in the largest-ever individually randomized trial of its kind.

Their resilience training app, called RESiLIENT, was tested on nearly 4,000 adults across Japan experiencing subthreshold depression—a form of low-level but persistent depressive symptoms that doesn’t meet criteria for major depressive disorder but can still be debilitating. This condition affects an estimated 11% of people worldwide and often goes untreated.

Researchers have developed a mesoporous Co₃O₄ catalyst doped with atomically dispersed iridium (Ir) for efficient acidic OER. This unique structure boosts Ir efficiency, minimizes metal leaching, and maintains performance for over 100 hours at just 248 mV overpotential.

Addressing the challenges of fragrance design, researchers at Institute of Science Tokyo  have developed an AI model that can automate the creation of new fragrances based on user-defined scent descriptors. The model uses mass spectrometry profiles of essential oils and corresponding odor descriptors to generate essential oil blends for new scents. This breakthrough is a game-changer for the fragrance industry, moving beyond trial-and-error, enabling rapid and scalable fragrance production.

Researchers led by Keigo Morita and Shinya Kuroda of the University of Tokyo have revealed a temporal disruption in the metabolism of obese mice when adapting to starvation despite no significant structural disruptions in the molecular network. This is a breakthrough discovery as research including the temporal dimension in biology has been notoriously laborious and extracting systematic insight from big data has been difficult. Thus, this study paves the way for further research into more general metabolic processes, such as food intake and disease progression. The findings were published in the journal Science Signaling.

A research team led by Dr. TANAKA Toshiko and Dr. HARUNO Masahiko at the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), investigated how avatar-mediated communication affects human decision-making. They discovered that participants were more likely to take risks when facial expressions (such as admiration or contempt) were displayed by avatars than when the same expressions were shown on real human faces. This increase in risk-taking was found to result from a more favorable valuation of the "uncertainty" of facial feedback in the avatar condition. Furthermore, fMRI analysis revealed that this valuation of uncertainty depends on activity in the amygdala.

A research team comprising members from the National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), Tohoku University, and the Photon Science Innovation Center (PhoSIC) has successfully identified the optimal composition of a Co-Mn-Si Heusler alloy exhibiting the highest spin polarization—a key property of half-metallic materials—in just one day of experiments. This achievement was made possible by fabricating a composition-spread thin film on a single substrate and conducting photoelectron measurements at a 3 GeV high-brilliance synchrotron radiation facility, NanoTerasu. This highly efficient optimization approach is expected to accelerate the development of high-performance spintronic materials.

Scientists have identified a simple, noninvasive method for assessing blood glucose regulation using continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) data. Their approach, which tracks glucose fluctuations, outperforms traditional markers in predicting diabetes risk. To expand accessibility, they have developed a web application for easy calculation of CGM-based indices.