Researchers from the Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo improve the accuracy of land surface models in capturing terrestrial water and energy budgets. Their combined hillslope water dynamic and vegetation model predicts the division of precipitation into soil moisture, evapotranspiration and runoff with improved accuracy. This new approach to land surface modeling is hoped to inform sustainable land and water management.

Soft magnetic materials are key components of electrical power devices. Excess eddy current loss is the main energy loss that occurs in these materials at high frequencies. However, the mechanisms of these losses is not clearly understood due to limitations of existing measurement systems. In a new study, researchers developed a wide-band, high-sensitivity Magnetic Barkhausen noise measurement system that enabled them to clarify the origin of excess eddy current loss in metallic NANOMET® ribbons.

Singers appearing in opera singing competitions are typically ranked based on an overall score assigned by the judges. However, it has remained unclear exactly what elements in the singer’s voice contribute to these scores. In a new study, researchers analyzed opera singing recordings to identify the impact of various vocal characteristics and acoustic features on the scores assigned by the judges. Their findings could provide a scientific basis for future vocal training and education.

Researchers at Institute of Science Tokyo created a new material platform for non-volatile memories using covalent organic frameworks (COFs), which are crystalline solids with high thermal stability. The researchers successfully installed electric-field-responsive dipolar rotors into COFs. Owing to the unique structure of the COFs, the dipolar rotors can flip in response to an electric field without being hampered by a steric hindrance from the surroundings, and their orientation can be held at ambient temperature for a long time, which are necessary conditions for non-volatile memories.

Researchers Shinjiro Takano, Yuya Hamasaki, and Tatsuya Tsukuda of the University of Tokyo have successfully visualized the geometric structure of growing gold nanoclusters in their earliest stages. During this process, they also successfully “grew” a novel structure of elongated nanoclusters, which they named “gold quantum needles.” Thanks to their responsiveness to light in the near-infrared range, these “needles” could enable much higher-resolution biomedical imaging and more efficient light-energy conversion. The findings were published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.