Insects possess abilities to detect chemical signals in their surroundings, inspiring the development of a generation of biohybrid sensing technologies. Researchers at Shinshu University and Chiba University are harnessing the remarkable odor-sensing capabilities of silkworm moth antennae and integrating them with drone platforms. Their latest research focuses on improving the interface between biological sensors and electronic systems, advancing the development of mobile sensing platforms designed to detect airborne chemical signals in complex and challenging environments.

The Institute of Statistical Mathematics (ISM) and the Japanese Federation of Statistical Science Associations (JFSSA) have named Christian P. Robert, professor at the Université Paris Dauphine-PSL and the University of Warwick, as the recipient of the sixth Akaike Memorial Lecture Award

Researchers from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) and Hiroshima University have discovered that a small magnetic field switches the layered quantum material CeTe₃ between competing electronic states that appear as striped or checkerboard patterns. Published July 23 in Nature Communications, the work reveals how magnetism can reorganize a quantum material’s entire electronic state.

The stability of ecosystems is affected by biodiversity at every level of the food chain. Scientists recently discovered that herbivore asynchrony stabilized a semi-arid grassland ecosystem by serving as a biological buffer between plant and predator communities.

Discovering the materials needed for cleaner energy technologies has long been a slow process - but AI could change that. Researchers at Tohoku University have developed a closed-loop AI framework that continuously learns from experiments to identify promising energy materials faster and at lower cost. The approach could accelerate the development of next-generation batteries, hydrogen storage and other low-carbon technologies. 

The battle against environmental degradation is complex. Green technologies can be both part of the solution and part of the problem, a recent study has revealed. Researchers from Tohoku University and the National Institute for Environmental Studies have utilized remote sensing and machine learning to reveal the impacts mining for minerals in green technologies has on biodiversity.

Researchers at Osaka Metropolitan University discovered that vitiligo may involve more than the immune-mediated destruction of pigment-producing cells. Instead, they found that some melanocytes persist within vitiligo lesions but enter a reversible “dedifferentiated-like state” in which they stop producing pigment but are otherwise still intact. Pharmacological modulation of these pathways in experimental models restored melanocyte characteristics and pigment-related functions, suggesting that reactivating surviving melanocytes, in addition to controlling autoimmune responses, could represent a new therapeutic strategy for vitiligo.

An ancient molecule that existed long before the blood circulation system evolved, has been found to support cancer immunotherapy. Researchers at Nagoya University in Japan found that complement C3 protein acts inside tumors to prevent the accumulation of immunosuppressive cells, but only when produced inside the tumor. C3 circulating in the blood did not affect treatment outcomes. Published in Nature Communications, the findings suggest that artificially recreating this effect can help patients with tumors that do not naturally produce enough of this protein.   

Kyoto, Japan -- How and why we experience consciousness is a question that has long plagued philosophers and scientists alike. We have come to understand that when awake our brains organize neural information for perception, yet we completely lose this organization under anesthesia. Why this happens is a longstanding mystery in neuroscience, as simple changes in the activity levels of specific brain regions fail to explain this disappearance of consciousness.

Theories have hypothesized that conscious perception arises from two core pillars: the brain's ability to encode external features, and its ability to transmit information across different cortical regions. While the former has been well-supported, direct physical evidence of the latter has remained elusive. A team of researchers at Kyoto University set out to bridge this critical gap between neural signals and information dynamics.

The team developed arrays for high-density custom electrocorticography -- or ECoG -- that covered most of the cerebral cortex of a rat's right hemisphere. This allowed them to extract traveling waves, physical phenomena in which electrical activity propagates across the brain like ripples in a pond. The scientists then analyzed these signals in simulations with transfer entropy, a mathematical metric that quantifies the directional flow of information. This approach allowed the team to investigate how tightly the neural signals and informational flows are linked.