By comparing dinosaur teeth with those of living animals, scientists can uncover clues about diet, feeding adaptations and evolution. Takafumi Kato, a professor of dinosaur paleontology at Okayama University of Science, explains how features such as serrations, wear patterns and dental batteries reveal how dinosaurs processed food. Similarities between the teeth of herbivorous dinosaurs and modern mammals also offer a striking example of convergent evolution, showing how unrelated animals can develop similar structures when adapting to perform the same function.

Tokyo, Japan – Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have created a new system to test magnetohydrodynamic aerobraking for spacecraft reentering the atmosphere. Their platform generates intense magnetic fields with a powerful electromagnet as a miniature vessel is hit with a shockwave traveling at over seven kilometers per second. Their magnets reached far higher fields than previous work with permanent magnets and are a crucial stepping stone toward tests with real vessels in the atmosphere.

Airborne genetic material could transform biodiversity and biosecurity monitoring, but researchers say major gaps in sampling, interpretation, and governance must be closed first before suitable technologies can be deployed.

Moral distress is the suffering healthcare professionals experience when they cannot act according to what they believe is right because of external constraints. Despite decades of study, how clinicians recognize what is ethically important has received little attention. Now, researchers from Japan propose a philosophical framework that offers a new account of moral distress, and proposes that moral sensitivity is a cultivated capacity to perceive ethical reasons for action. Their work suggests clinicians with greater moral sensitivity may paradoxically be more vulnerable to moral distress. 

By combining two complementary clues—camera geometry and visual appearance—researchers at Institute of Science Tokyo, Japan, developed a new approach for preserving identities across multiple cameras. The method uses epipolar geometry to identify spatially consistent candidate matches and appearance similarity to distinguish between possible identities. The approach can be integrated with existing single-camera tracking systems without requiring environment-specific retraining.

Researchers in Japan found that blood levels of the metabolic substance N-acyl taurines (NATs) correlate with Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) progression. They also demonstrated that PF-04457845, a compound already shown to be safe in humans, slows motor decline in ALS mouse models. These findings suggest a potential new therapeutic option.

Despite an immense global burden, the underlying mechanisms for chronic kidney disease (CKD) remain poorly understood. A study based on the Txn1-F54L mutant rat model shows that lifelong thioredoxin (Trx) deficiency leads to progressive CKD. The study reveals that mitochondrial dysfunction caused by oxidative stress induces multiple types of regulated cell deaths. The model can provide a useful platform for developing therapeutic strategies for CKD directed at oxidative stress-related pathways.

Researchers at Ritsumeikan University report a halogen-guided method for transforming accessible hydroxycoumarins into coumaranones, valuable heterocyclic structures in medicinal chemistry. Inspired by halogenation-driven bond cleavage in natural product biosynthesis, the method deletes a carbonyl group through simultaneous C–C and C–O bond cleavage under room temperature without the need for transition metals. The approach offers a practical strategy for molecular scaffold editing and potentially streamlining synthesis of biologically relevant compounds.

Acting as an armor, a scaffold, and a communication platform, the plasma membrane lies at the heart of many crucial cellular processes. Now, researchers at OIST and collaborating institutions have revealed a crucial yet often overlooked membrane component: complex sugar chains, known as glycans. They found that glycans carried by gangliosides form weak, short-lived pairs through repeated "fleeting encounters," helping build membrane nanodomains and regulate epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) signaling, which in turn modulates cell division. 

When proteins and lipids interact at the cell surface, they kick off essential cellular signaling pathways that play a role in physiological processes throughout the body. When these interactions and signaling pathways are disrupted, it can create conditions where cells can grow out of control and turn into tumors or other diseases. Therefore, understanding how these molecules interact at the cell surface may help inform the development of more targeted therapies in the future. Beyond proteins and lipids, polymers made of sugars called glycans that form a layer on the cell surface also seem to play a similarly important role that has yet to be completely understood.