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A research team from the Urban and Transportation Systems Laboratory, Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering, Toyohashi University of Technology, conducted research on the impact of digital services alternative usage on equity and sustainability in cities. The study reveals how the use of digital services, such as online shopping and remote work, interacts with social networks and demographics to affect residential location choice and urban structure. The results of this research were published in the international academic journal "Sustainability".

When a water-based polymer solution dries, the liquid surface splits in uneven, unpredictable ways—a phenomenon called symmetry breaking. Using a natural polymer in a controlled drying setting, researchers from JAIST, Japan, identified that the irregular patterns in symmetry breaking don’t just form by chance but follow hidden physical rules. This discovery offers new insight into how asymmetric patterns in nature form and could impact fields from material design to biological development.

Herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) infections can lead to deadly brain inflammation, yet treatment options remain limited. Japanese researchers have now uncovered how HSV-1 evades the host’s intrinsic immunity by using an enzyme, uracil-DNA glycosylase, to block APOBEC1, a host protein that edits viral DNA to suppress infection. They also developed a promising therapeutic strategy to restore immune defense in the brain, offering new hope for managing HSV-1-induced encephalitis.

Often, physics can be used to make sense of the natural world. Increasingly though, scientists are looking at biological systems to spark new insights in physics. By studying squid skin, researchers have identified the first biological instance of a physical phenomenon called ‘hyperdisorder’, bringing new understanding into how growth can affect physics.

Published in PRX, an interdisciplinary team from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) studied the effect of growth on pattern development within squid skin cells. By combining experimental imaging methods with theoretical modeling, they found new insights into the unusual arrangement of these cells, and created a general model of hyperdisorder applicable to a wide variety of growing systems.