Kyoto, Japan --  During the midday Friday prayer hours on 28 March 2025, a magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck central Myanmar along the Sagaing Fault. With an epicenter close to Mandalay, the country's second-largest city, it was the most powerful earthquake to strike Myanmar in more than a century and the second deadliest in its modern history.

The cause was a strike-slip fault, in which two masses of earth "slip" past each other horizontally along a vertical fault plane. To an observer, it would look like the ground were split in two along a defined line, with both sides being wrenched past each other in opposite directions.

Previous seismological studies have inferred pulse-like rupture behavior and curved slip paths from the analysis of seismic data. However, because the recording instruments were at a considerable distance from the fault itself, these findings were indirect.

A team from The University of Osaka found that the intestinal flora works together with the OTUD3 and STING genes to aggravate ulcerative colitis, a disease with no cure that causes major intestinal pain and bloody diarrhea. When the OTUD3 gene is mutated, microbes in the intestinal flora trigger STING signalingOTUD, leading to inflammation in the colon. The intestinal flora and STING signaling may be important new targets for ulcerative colitis treatment.

Researchers from the University of Tokyo in collaboration with Aisin Corporation have demonstrated that universal scaling laws, which describe how the properties of a system change with size and scale, apply to deep neural networks that exhibit absorbing phase transition behavior, a phenomenon typically observed in physical systems. The discovery not only provides a framework describing deep neural networks but also helps predict their trainability or generalizability. The findings were published in the journal Physical Review Research.

When fermented with plant-derived bacteria, stevia leaf extract is toxic to pancreatic cancer cells but not to healthy kidney cells

Pain is an important physiological response triggered by physical injury or psychological stressors. While studies have shown that mice housed with mice experiencing pain show heightened pain sensitivity, underlying mechanisms remain unclear. A new study by researchers from Tokyo University of Science finds that exposure to stress calls emitted by mice experiencing pain triggers pain and inflammation in naïve mice, thus providing novel insights into pain perception and its social transmission.

Researchers have solved a mystery that has confounded scientists for 80 years: the crystal structure of the tetra-n-butylammonium bromide (TBAB) hydrate TBAB·26H₂O. This substance belongs to a class of crystalline materials called semiclathrate hydrates, which form from the combination of ions and water. Since its discovery in 1940, this TBAB hydrate has been widely used in a range of applications, including air conditioning. Understanding the crystal structure of this important semiclathrate hydrate will help scientists and engineers better utilize TBAB hydrate.

Significantly reducing greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere to mitigate the most devastating effects of climate change will require a large reduction in emissions as well as strategies designed to sequester emitted CO₂ and other offending gasses. A team of research scientists recently used recycled silicon wafers from discarded solar panels to efficiently convert CO₂ into formic acid and formamide, two useful, value-added organic compounds.