Researchers from the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Japan, assessed the ethics of large language model-generated advice for modifying built environments to support health. In the first study of its kind, researchers evaluated 180 ChatGPT responses across six health pathways, neighborhood income contexts, and budget conditions using four ethical criteria. ChatGPT consistently avoided harmful recommendations and rarely gave lower-income neighborhoods weaker proposals, but showed less consistent community participation and oversight, particularly under constraints.

While gut bacteria clearly influence host health, determining whether they or their metabolic byproducts alone contribute to longevity remains challenging. A recent study using gnotobiotic flies colonized with genetically engineered Escherichia coli demonstrated that bacterial polyamines directly extend host lifespan. By clearly separating metabolite effects from bacterial presence, these findings highlight gut-derived polyamines as a tangible, promising target for future life-extending strategies for healthy longevity.

Electronic materials can change their behavior when molecules interact with surrounding ions, but controlling these effects remains challenging. Now, researchers from Ritsumeikan University, Japan, have developed π-electronic cations whose molecular shape and electronic properties are controlled by counteranions. The ion-dependent changes modulate photoinduced electron transfer, pressure-responsive photophysical behavior, and solid-state assembly, offering design principles for smart materials, molecular switches, sensors, and tunable charge-transport technologies. These findings could accelerate development of next-generation responsive electronic devices.

Researchers at the Research Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics (MANA), one of the centers under the National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), Japan, discovered that atomic-scale steps can guide superconducting vortices in an ultrathin superconductor. Vortices moved more than 1,000 times more easily along the steps than across them, and this guiding effect could be tuned by temperature and magnetic field.

Solid electrolytes are promising materials for safer, more compact all-solid-state batteries, but producing smooth thin films with high ionic conductivity remains challenging. In a recent study, researchers from Shibaura Institute of Technology, Japan, developed a multilayer method using lithium borohydride and lithium iodide to create high-iodine thin films. Their approach improved iodine incorporation, maintained relatively smooth surfaces, and produced good room-temperature ionic conductivity, opening new possibilities for thin-film solid electrolytes.

Synthetic dyes in industrial wastewater can threaten aquatic ecosystems and human health. Researchers at Doshisha University, Japan, developed a green, single-step co-pyrolysis method that converts bullrush agricultural waste into a zero-valent copper nanoparticle-enhanced bullrush activated carbon (ZVCu@BAC) composite. The material removed both cationic and anionic dyes in laboratory tests, while its preliminary production cost of ~¥1,800 JPY/kg and regeneration performance highlight its potential for sustainable wastewater treatment.

Osaka Metropolitan University researchers found that participation in community gathering places was associated with lower long-term care costs among older adults requiring support or exhibiting mild functional decline.

The National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) has discovered molecular mechanism of synaptic facilitation, instantaneous strengthening of synaptic transmission, which may be physiological basis of instantaneous memory. Synaptic facilitation has been known for a long time and studied by major physiologists. However, its mechanism and its biological meaning still remain ambiguous. This study revealed that intramolecular interaction of a calcium binding protein, Synaptotagmin 7 (Syt7) functions for synaptic facilitation, and the interaction between Syt7 domains is required for memory. This study using a fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, which is a model animal for genetic analysis, provides an insight for general mechanism of memory, which may suggest new designs of future ICT. Since this is the first elucidation of molecular mechanism of Syt7, this study has the potential in the future to be applied to diseases, which has been reported to be related to Syt7.

This achievement appeared in the “Calcium sensing by C2A domain of Synaptotagmin 7 is required through the linker for both synaptic facilitation and memory”, in Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America on September 21, 2026.

Humans stand apart from other great apes: we walk on two legs, carry unusually large brains, and have slender, distinctively shaped skeletons. Yet which changes in our DNA produced these features has remained one of biology’s great open questions. Human and chimpanzee genomes are more than 98% identical, and the genes themselves, the blueprints for proteins, barely differ. The changes that make us human are thought to hide instead in the DNA that controls when and where genes switch on.

A team led by Associate Professor Fumitaka Inoue and researcher Yizhi Yan at Kyoto University’s Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Biology (WPI-ASHBi), together with Principal Investigator David Gokhman and Nadav Mishol at the Weizmann Institute of Science, has now built the world’s first functional atlas of the human-specific gene-control changes behind our skeleton. Combining two powerful techniques (massively parallel reporter assays, or MPRA, and human-ape hybrid cells), they discovered that a family of molecules called glycosaminoglycans (GAGs), which cushion and maintain our cartilage, has been dialed down over the course of human evolution. The finding offers a new window onto how the human skeleton took its shape, and onto why we are so uniquely susceptible to skeletal disease.

The work will be published in Nature on 23 September 2026 at 11:00 EST.

Tokyo, Japan – Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have used an evolutionary algorithm to identify optimal shapes for ultra-thin, bio-inspired corrugated airfoils, the two-dimensional cut-throughs of wings. Lightweight membrane-like wings are a strong contender for use in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in thin atmospheres, like on Mars, and in UAV miniaturization. By using a “zero-thickness” model, they were able to focus on the effect of the airfoil corrugation pattern without the influence of a wing’s leading-edge thickness and shape. They discovered designs which were optimized for minimal drag or maximal lift.