Some industrial processes used to create useful chemicals require heat, but heating methods are often inefficient, partly because they heat a greater volume of space than they really need to. Researchers including those from the University of Tokyo devised a way to limit heating to the specific areas required in such situations. Their technique uses microwaves, not unlike those used in home microwave ovens, to excite specific elements dispersed in the materials to be heated. Their system proved to be around 4.5 times more efficient than current methods.

Although there is a growing scholarly interest in studying the engagement of expatriates in external voting in their countries of origin, conventional survey methods often fall short of accurately representing the perceptions and political participation of undocumented immigrants. Remedying this gap, researchers from Japan used respondent-driven sampling to assess the factors that influence the political participation of undocumented Mexican immigrants residing in the US in Mexican elections.

A 6-year cohort study conducted by researchers from Japan, comprising nearly 39,000 older adults found that people living in rental flats and owner-occupied detached houses face higher risks of cardiovascular death compared with those in owner-occupied flats. The study attributes to the increased risk to colder, less stable indoor temperatures in these housing types and suggests that improving housing quality to address these issues could lower cardiovascular mortality, particularly among men.

With the rapid spread of generative AI, the demand for more energy-efficient methods of powering the hardware is becoming apparent. Now, researchers have succeeded in applying on-axis magnetron sputtering on thulium iron garnet (TmIG)—a promising material that can enable high-speed, low-power information rewriting at room temperature—to build more energy-efficient magnetic random-access memory.

Levitation has long been pursued by stage magicians and physicists alike. For audiences, the sight of objects floating midair is wondrous. For scientists, it’s a powerful way of isolating objects from external disturbances. This is particularly useful in case of rotors, as their torque and angular momentum, used to measure gravity, gas pressure, momentum, among other phenomena in both classical and quantum physics, can be strongly influenced by friction. Freely suspending the rotor could drastically reduce these disturbances – and now, researchers from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) have designed, created, and analyzed such a macroscopic device, bringing the magic of near-frictionless levitation down to earth through precision engineering. 

Researchers at University of Tsukuba and The University of Tokyo have discovered that radio waves emitted from primordial hydrogen gas in the early Universe contain a "fingerprint" that reveals the properties of dark matter. Theoretical calculations have accurately reproduced the distribution of dark matter and the state of hydrogen gas in the early Universe. Radio observatories planned for construction on the Moon are expected to detect these signals, advancing our understanding of the true nature of dark matter.

Researchers at University of Tsukuba have developed DeMemSeg, an AI-powered analysis pipeline that addresses a long-standing challenge in microscopy: precisely segmenting and measuring individual cell membranes that overlap in two-dimensional (2D) projection images. This innovation is expected to accelerate research on cellular mechanisms and related diseases.

Researchers at University of Tsukuba have investigated the genetic diversity and future distribution of Shorea macrophylla (Dipterocarpaceae), an important tree species endemic to Borneo. They found that populations in northeastern Borneo represent the species' origin. Climate change projections suggest that suitable habitat for this tree will expand in the future.

Researchers explore the human immune system by looking at the active components, namely the various genes and cells involved. But there is a broad range of these, and observations necessarily produce vast amounts of data. For the first time, researchers including those from the University of Tokyo built a software tool which leverages artificial intelligence to not only offer a more consistent analysis of these cells at speed but also categorizes them and aims to spot novel patterns people have not yet seen.