People buy things using services like Amazon and Rakuten and share information on social media. We call these places of commerce and exchange “platforms,” and nowadays, they’ve become essential parts of our lives. On the other hand, various issues have also been pointed out in recent years regarding the direction of these platforms, such as oligopolies formed by massive corporations and scams from fake advertising. We sat down with Professor ZENNYO Yusuke of the Graduate School of Business Administration, who researches platform businesses, to tell us about the background and current state of these rapidly growing businesses as well as some challenges moving forward.

What could a powerful El Niño mean for Southern Appalachia?

Lehigh University researchers have built the first “AI for Science” software tool designed to support the entire project workflow for research scientists. Dr. Claw is an open-source, full-stack AI research assistant that helps users refine ideas, conduct literature reviews, run experiments, draft and review papers, write grant proposals, and build presentations. It eliminates the need to toggle between specialized AI tools—such as deep research agents for source evaluation or code generators for data analysis—by unifying these capabilities within a single interface.

The new AI tool “Palaeographicum” is revolutionizing research into the cultures of the Ancient Near East: It identifies individual variations of cuneiform signs—a huge step forward for academia.