While both yogurt and hot spring bathing have been reported to positively influence the gut environment, the health effects of their combination had not been investigated. The researchers demonstrated that combining yogurt intake with hot spring bathing may have even greater beneficial effects on the gut microbiota and defecation status than yogurt alone.

Researchers at the RIKEN Pioneering Research Institute (PRI) in Japan have discovered a way to max out the amount of hydrogen that can be stored in perovskite crystalline powder. The trick is to introduce the hydrogen into the perovskite lattice structure using mechanochemistry – chemical reactions that occur by physically grinding and mixing compounds together. Because this process requires less energy than traditional non-mechanical methods, the discovery is eco-friendly and good for future sustainability. 

Most high-performance materials and pharmaceuticals require multiple chemical reaction steps during synthesis, each needing different conditions, reagents, and catalysts. In a recent study, researchers from Japan developed a new method—redox-adaptive auto-tandem catalysis—that enables two entirely different reactions to occur sequentially in a single container using an inexpensive cerium-based catalyst. This approach streamlines synthesis, reduces energy use and chemical waste, and offers a greener pathway for producing valuable compounds under mild conditions.

JapanFlux2024 is Asia’s first large-scale open dataset of eddy covariance observations, compiled by Japanese researchers. Covering 83 sites across East and Southeast Asia, it tracks carbon, water and energy exchange in terrestrial ecosystems. The dataset fills a regional information gap and supports climate, land-use and carbon cycle research.

Researchers from Kumamoto University have identified a distinctive CT imaging pattern that can predict which women experiencing severe postpartum hemorrhage (PPH) are most likely to need life-saving interventions. The new finding, termed PRACE (Postpartum hemorrhage, Resistance to treatment, and Arterial Contrast Extravasation), was observed in nearly one-third of patients undergoing dynamic CT scans and was strongly associated with the need for emergency procedures such as uterine artery embolization.

With climate change and more frequent extreme weather events, researchers predict that global yields of important crops like maize, rice, and soybeans could decline by 12 to 20% by the end of the century. To prepare, plant scientists are hoping to find ways to improve yields and grow hardier varieties of these crops. New insights into the genetic makeup of wild varieties of common crops show how domestication has changed crop traits over time and proposes a new cultivation method to improve genetic diversity.

Kyoto, Japan -- The size of our universe and the bodies within it is incomprehensible for us lowly humans. The sun has a mass that is more than 330,000 that of our Earth, and yet there are stars in the universe that completely dwarf our sun.

Stars with masses more than eight times that of the sun are considered high mass stars. These form rapidly in a process that gives off stellar wind and radiation, which could not result in stars of such high mass without somehow overcoming this loss of mass, or feedback. Something is feeding these stars, but how exactly they can accumulate so much mass so quickly has remained a mystery.

Observations of enormous disk-like structures that form around a star -- accretion disks -- had been proposed as the chief way of rapidly feeding young stars. However, a team of researchers from several institutions including Kyoto University and the University of Tokyo, has discovered another possibility.

A collaborative research team from Kanazawa University, the Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad, and the University of Strathclyde has developed a novel method for forming high-performance high-entropy alloy (HEA) films on various surfaces—without the need for costly alloy targets. By using a proprietary rotating target composed of multiple pure metal segments and pulsed laser deposition (PLD) technology, the team successfully demonstrated a cost-effective and versatile approach to HEA film fabrication.

Researchers at University of Tsukuba have demonstrated that graphitizing the fractured surface of a mechanical pencil lead enables the easy creation of axially oriented graphene edges, which serve as high-quality electron beam sources. The pointed morphology of graphene allowed for stable emission currents under weak electric fields without requiring an ultra-high vacuum environment.