Kyoto, Japan -- Giving birth is hard enough; postpartum depression can make adjusting to parenthood all the more difficult. A healthy diet is essential for new mothers to build strength after such a taxing ordeal, but what if what they eat could also lower the risk of baby blues?

While studies in Western countries have linked gut microbiota to depressive symptoms, little is known about this association in healthy postpartum mothers, particularly in Japan, where cultural barriers often prevent mothers from seeking psychiatric help.

This inspired a team of researchers at Kyoto University to design a cross-sectional study of 344 women from across Japan raising young children. The team assessed participants' depressive and physical symptoms as well as their dietary habits, and analyzed their stool samples.

Researchers from the Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo improve the accuracy of land surface models in capturing terrestrial water and energy budgets. Their combined hillslope water dynamic and vegetation model predicts the division of precipitation into soil moisture, evapotranspiration and runoff with improved accuracy. This new approach to land surface modeling is hoped to inform sustainable land and water management.

Magnetic resonance imaging often yields inconsistent results when assessing the brain’s structural characteristics in children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). To address this, scientists from Japan have used a harmonization method called traveling-subject (TS) to reduce measurement bias in brain imaging datasets from multiple sites. The TS harmonized datasets showed significant reductions in measurement bias and revealed apparent volumetric changes in specific brain regions, indicating promise for developing a more robust diagnosis for ADHD.

Soft magnetic materials are key components of electrical power devices. Excess eddy current loss is the main energy loss that occurs in these materials at high frequencies. However, the mechanisms of these losses is not clearly understood due to limitations of existing measurement systems. In a new study, researchers developed a wide-band, high-sensitivity Magnetic Barkhausen noise measurement system that enabled them to clarify the origin of excess eddy current loss in metallic NANOMET® ribbons.

Singers appearing in opera singing competitions are typically ranked based on an overall score assigned by the judges. However, it has remained unclear exactly what elements in the singer’s voice contribute to these scores. In a new study, researchers analyzed opera singing recordings to identify the impact of various vocal characteristics and acoustic features on the scores assigned by the judges. Their findings could provide a scientific basis for future vocal training and education.

Researchers at Institute of Science Tokyo created a new material platform for non-volatile memories using covalent organic frameworks (COFs), which are crystalline solids with high thermal stability. The researchers successfully installed electric-field-responsive dipolar rotors into COFs. Owing to the unique structure of the COFs, the dipolar rotors can flip in response to an electric field without being hampered by a steric hindrance from the surroundings, and their orientation can be held at ambient temperature for a long time, which are necessary conditions for non-volatile memories.

Astronomers using ESO’s 8-meter telescope (VLT) have caught the protoplanet AB Aurigae b actively accreting material from its surrounding disk. Its light spectrum resembles that of young stars gathering mass, providing the first direct evidence of material falling onto a protoplanet. This confirms that AB Aurigae b is among the youngest protoplanets observed, still embedded within its birth disk.