A team including researchers from the University of Tokyo found the distance family caregivers have from people they care for can affect how they reflect on stressful experiences. When caregivers engage in therapeutic writing soon after a stressful event or while they are with the person they care for, they tend to focus their writing on emotional expression or on the care recipient. Waiting for some time, moving to another space, or handing care to someone else, can help caregivers take a more objective view and even work through problems. The researchers used a smartphone app to examine how timing, physical surroundings and caregiving responsibilities affected the carers’ reflective writing. 

Researchers at SUTD have built a robotic platform that can be dropped from the air onto remote waters and sail autonomously using wind energy, pairing rapid aerial deployment with the potential for long duration marine monitoring.

A research team from the Vision and Action Laboratory, Visual Perception and Cognition Laboratory, and Cognitive Neurotechnology Unit in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Toyohashi University of Technology, led by Associate Professor Hideki Tamura, has demonstrated that, even when an object moves at the same physical speed, its approach is perceived as faster when it comes from behind than when it approaches from the front. Across five experiments using both a real autonomous mobile robot (AMR) and immersive virtual reality (VR), 92% of the participants consistently exhibited this perceptual bias, perceiving approaches from behind as faster than frontal approaches. The results further suggest that this phenomenon is unlikely to be explained by factors such as object appearance or motor noise, but is instead associated with vision-dependent factors that arise when observers turn around to view an approaching object from behind. Furthermore, by incorporating the experimentally observed perceptual bias into a robot navigation model, the researchers simulated a robot overtaking a pedestrian from behind. The simulation suggested that accounting for human perceptual characteristics results in avoidance trajectories that begin earlier while maintaining a greater distance from pedestrians than conventional navigation models.

The study was published in IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters on September 10, 2026.

https://doi.org/10.1109/LRA.2026.3732839

University of Birmingham researchers uncover a new materials-design principle with potential applications from clean energy to aerospace

Antibiotic residues in water are an emerging environmental concern because conventional treatment processes may not remove them completely. Now, researchers have shown that carefully tuning the balance of nitrogen and boron in biochar made from waste sawdust can greatly improve its ability to activate an oxidant and break down the widely used antibiotic sulfamethoxazole.

Jason Williams has been named the permanent director of the AgResearch and Education Center at Milan effective October 1, 2026.