Researchers at Ritsumeikan University and collaborating institutions have shown that counteranions control the solid-state assembly of paramagnetic thiaporphyrin Cu^II complex cations and thereby tune their magnetic behavior. PCCp⁻ formed a charge-by-charge assembly without significant spin–spin interaction, whereas nonplanar counteranions promoted π-stacked cation dimers exhibiting antiferromagnetic interactions. These findings demonstrate that ion-pairing assembly can control molecular spin arrangements, providing a strategy for designing supramolecular materials with tunable magnetic properties for spintronic applications.

To simulate event cameras, which can capture brightness changes at microsecond-scale speeds, conventional methods render numerous frames from 3D scenes, resulting in high computational costs. Researchers from Japan developed an efficient method using physically based path tracing to precisely determine event timings. The efficient implementation using GPUs reduces computation time to as little as one-third of a naïve implementation, enabling more efficient training-data generation for event camera applications, including healthcare monitoring, autonomous driving, and robotics.

The clinical progression and outcomes of two major herpesvirus retinitis forms are associated with patients’ immune status, reveal Institute of Science Tokyo scientists. They evaluated the clinical symptoms at presentation, retinal detachment (RD) patterns, treatment strategies, and clinical outcomes of acute retinal necrosis (ARN) and cytomegalovirus retinitis (CMVR). They found that ARN was strongly associated with RD whereas CMVR followed an indolent course. These findings may help in early diagnosis and management of viral retinitis.

An international research team led by University of Tsukuba has discovered fossilized eggshells of large herbivorous titanosaurs collected from the Late Cretaceous Chorrillo Formation in southern Argentina and inferred their nesting behavior. These titanosaur eggshells are the highest-latitude dinosaur eggshell fossils definitively identified in the Southern Hemisphere. The findings suggest that the dinosaurs buried their eggs in nest substrate in a relatively high-latitude environment and used heat generated within the nest to incubate them.

Researchers from the Institute of Industrial Science at The University of Tokyo used advanced instruments to watch small crystals on a scale of about one millionth of a meter as they soaked up chloroform. Parts of these crystals were found to work together to change shape, and some crystals began to move. Understanding these effects could lead to the design of new high-tech devices, such as sensors for pollutants.

KANAZAWA, Japan — Spatial transcriptomics can reveal where thousands of genes are active across a tissue, creating molecular maps at single-cell resolution. But comparing two such maps is difficult: thin slices of tissue may be rotated, stretched, or otherwise distorted, so equivalent regions do not automatically line up.

Researchers at Kanazawa University and Sapienza University of Rome have developed a computational method that aligns these maps directly from the individual measurement locations and their gene-activity values. Called Domain Elastic Transform (DET), it smoothly reshapes one digital map to match another without first converting the measurements into a regular grid of pixels.

The research, led by Osamu Hirose of Kanazawa University in collaboration with Emanuele Rodolà of Sapienza University of Rome, was published online in IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence on September 15, 2026.

Billions of years ago, rain may have helped shape where the chemistry of life could begin on Mars. A new study maps the delivery of formaldehyde, an important prebiotic molecule, to the surface. The map could help guide future Mars missions searching for signs of the planet’s early organic evolution. 

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. 

A collaborative study led by researchers from the Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Medical Science and the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology has demonstrated that tau filaments extracted from Alzheimer's disease (AD) and corticobasal degeneration (CBD) patient brains, when injected into wild-type mouse brains, induce the formation of endogenous tau amyloid-like filaments with the same disease-specific structures. The injected human tau disappears within a week, while mouse tau pathology arises and spreads over months, confirming prion-like transmission. Cryo-electron microscopy revealed that the newly formed tau filaments share identical folded structures with the original human tau strains. This mouse model provides vital insights into the molecular mechanisms underlying tauopathies and offers a platform for developing novel therapies targeting tau-related neurodegenerative diseases.