Kyoto, Japan -- Many owners will enthusiastically attest that their cat has improved their quality of life. Some studies support this common claim that caring for a feline friend has positive effects on human health and wellbeing. However, the evidence is inconsistent, and other studies have even reported possible negative effects of cat ownership.

This led a team of researchers at Kyoto University to question the idea that simply owning a cat provides intrinsic health benefits. Instead, they wondered whether any benefits or drawbacks to keeping a cat come from the quality of the relationship between the human and cat, particularly how owners interact with their cats in everyday life.

To investigate, the team conducted a one-month study of the daily lives of a group of 29 cats and their 19 owners, recruited through flyers and social media. In each household, the researchers conducted hormonal analysis through urine samples, attached Small Bluetooth Low Energy -- BLE -- beacons to the cats' collars to measure daily physical proximity, assessed the owners' mood through questionnaires, and observed the cats' behavior toward their owners and unfamiliar people.

Dogs spontaneously follow the walking direction of a human figure represented by just a few moving dots, yet show no such directional bias when the dots depict another dog. In a study published in Cognitive Science Research, researchers found that dogs respond to directional cues from human biological motion as readily as they do to human head turns, suggesting that domestication may have tuned canine social perception to human movement.

Researchers have developed a dynamic approach to improve the deployment of healthcare workers during disease outbreaks. By considering uncertain medical demand, changing healthcare capacity, and infection risks among healthcare staff, the model helps decision-makers allocate medical resources more effectively across regions. The study provides a practical framework for improving healthcare system resilience and supporting timely responses to public health emergencies.

- Endowed Chair Professor Buhm Soon Park of the Graduate School of Science and Technology Policy and an international research team propose a definition of the Anthropocene and directions for its application

- The team proposes 1952 as the starting point, focusing on the rapid changes to the Earth since the mid-20th century

- The concept is expected to serve as a common language connecting the Earth sciences, the humanities and social sciences, and policy