Japan has been experiencing increasingly severe damage from torrential rainfall triggered by typhoons and stationary linear rain bands. In response, an ambitious and unconventional idea is taking shape: artificially inducing heavy rainfall over the ocean to reduce extreme downpours on land. This pioneering project was selected for the Cabinet Office’s Moonshot Research and Development Program and is led by Professor Shunji Kotsuki of the Institute for Advanced Academic Research/Center for Environmental Remote Sensing, who serves as project manager.

While Professor Kotsuki runs his laboratory and discussions with rigorous logic, he is guided by a clear belief: “When you aim to accomplish something meaningful, it ultimately comes down to passion and energy.” In this interview, we spoke with him about the current state of weather control and AI-based weather forecasting research, as well as the mindset that underpins his pursuit of challenging, future-oriented science.

Nanographenes can be considered as molecular fragments of graphene, a 2D conductive material in which carbon atoms are connected in a honeycomb pattern. Because their electronic and photophysical properties vary depending on the size and shape of the molecule, nanographenes are expected to find applications in OLEDs, organic solar cells, organic field-effect transistors, and more. For this, simple methods to synthesizing nanographenes that avoid complex multi-step processes are desired. Now, a team of scientists from WPI-ITbM at Nagoya University and from RIKEN have established a new two-step annulative p-extension (APEX) method that generates structurally diverse nanographenes. This research was published online in the scientific journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition on August 25.

A flexible metal–organic framework developed by researchers from Institute of Science Tokyo enables the structural determination of large “beyond rule of 5” molecules from microgram-scale samples. Using APF-40 as a crystalline sponge, the researchers determined the structures of 12 pharmaceutical-related molecules, including the 899 Da drug molecule doramectin and trace ivermectin derivatives. The method could aid drug discovery, natural products research, and the characterization of rare compounds available only in very small quantities.

The smell of Japanese Igusa (rush grass), the core component of tatami mats, has long been associated with comfort and relaxation. However, there was little scientific evidence behind such claims. To test this, researchers measured the brain activity of volunteers while they sat on Igusa mats and completed simple tasks. The researchers found that when using the Igusa mats the participants’ brain activity suggested they had better focus, cognitive engagement, and stress resilience.

The textbook view often describes euchromatin, the active part of the genome, as open and accessible. A research team led by Kazuhiro Maeshima has now shown that euchromatin in living human cells forms condensed domains whose local mixing is constrained by cohesin. When cohesin is lost, these domains become more fluid and locally mix without global decompaction, weakening transcriptional insulation.

You can now get glossy, car-paint-quality color from a coating that contains no pigment at all. The Kobe University development makes non-fading structural color applicable to complex surfaces at scale, fixes angle-dependent color and allows for applying protective layers for real-world use.

Researchers at the University of Osaka discovered FoeAB, a previously unknown bacterial pump that exports the antibiotic fosfomycin. By combining transport experiments with cryo-electron microscopy, the team revealed how the protein recognizes and moves the drug across the cell membrane. The findings expand understanding of antibiotic efflux in Gram-positive bacteria and could support new strategies to counter drug resistance and improve treatment of bacterial infections.

Researchers have developed a new computational method that enables cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) datasets to surpass traditional physical resolution limits after data collection. The technique, called Post-Acquisition Super Resolution (PASR), enhances standard cryo-EM movies through a lightweight pre-processing step applied before motion correction. PASR allows higher-resolution structural information to be recovered from existing datasets without recollecting data at higher magnification and can also be applied to data acquired as super-resolution. The method was successfully tested on multiple datasets, including apoferritin, adeno-associated virus, jack bean urease, and the giant virus Melbournevirus, and proved compatible with standard cryo-EM software pipelines such as RELION and CryoSPARC. PASR may reduce microscope time, storage demands, and data-collection costs while improving structural analysis of large, flexible, or heterogeneous biological complexes.