An Osaka Metropolitan University-led research team analyzed residential energy consumption in ten cities across Japan from north to south and confirmed that significant energy savings can be achieved through enhanced insulation and innovative window design. 

The “Wakuwaku Aira Dinosaur Museum Exhibition,” organized by Aira City in cooperation with Okayama University of Science, concluded successfully on December 27, 2025, attracting a total of 11,580 visitors over eight days. Held at Aira Square in the city’s newly completed municipal office building, the exhibition showcased approximately 20 dinosaur-related specimens, including a full-body tyrannosaurid skeletal reconstruction, a Triceratops skull, and Tarbosaurus fossils.

The exhibition emphasized hands-on learning and research outreach, featuring a recreated excavation site from the Gobi Desert in Mongolia, along with panels and videos introducing paleontological fieldwork. Daily workshops allowed children to experience fossil replica making and fossil cleaning activities. Students from the Faculty of Biosphere-Geosphere Science served as guides, providing accessible explanations of dinosaur research to visitors.

On the final day, an educational lecture titled “Digging for Dinosaurs in Mongolia!” was delivered by Masato Fujita, professor of dinosaur paleontology and director of the Museum of Dinosaur Research at Okayama University of Science, attracting approximately 150 attendees.

Originally expected to draw around 5,000 visitors, the exhibition’s turnout more than doubled projections, highlighting strong public interest in dinosaurs and science education. Organizers noted that the combination of authentic research content, interactive experiences, and student-led explanations contributed significantly to the exhibition’s success.

Muons are particles used to study fundamental physics and to image large structures such as volcanoes, bridges and ancient buildings. But despite their apparent benefits to science – and even society more broadly – muons only have a half-life of around one microsecond. Now researchers at the University of Plymouth have suggested a means of overcoming that, using intense laser pulses to reduce the rate of decay and at least double the muon’s lifetime.

Floating offshore wind turbines (FOWTs) operate under complex ocean conditions, where currents generate vortex shedding that can trigger platform oscillation, affecting turbine safety and energy output. This study uses high-fidelity computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to explore how different flow incidence angles (0°, 90°, 180°) influence the vortex-induced motion (VIM) of a semi-submersible FOWT platform. Results show clear differences in surge, sway, and yaw responses when the current direction changes, with strong lock-in behavior occurring at reduced velocity V_R = 6–10. The work highlights how pontoons and cross braces suppress VIM amplitudes by disturbing the wake patterns. The findings provide valuable insight for improving design safety and optimizing hydrodynamic performance of FOWT platforms.

A new study published in Big Earth Data evaluates ten satellite-based and reanalysis precipitation datasets available in Google Earth Engine using rain gauge observations across Czechia from 2001 to 2021. The results show that the gauge-adjusted GSMaP dataset provides the highest overall accuracy, while ERA5-Land performs well for long-term analyses despite systematic overestimation. The findings offer clear guidance for selecting reliable precipitation datasets for hydrological, climate, and environmental applications, particularly in regions with complex terrain.

New University of Hawaiʻi research confirms that “Sharktober” is real, revealing a statistically significant spike in shark bite incidents in Hawaiian waters every October. The study, which analyzed 30 years of data (1995–2024), found that about 20% of all recorded bites occurred in that single month, a frequency far exceeding any other time of the year. Researchers at UH Mānoa’s Hawai‘i Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB) Shark Lab published their findings in Frontiers in Marine Science.