Empirical research is being carried out for revolutionary air conditioning technology that will contribute to solving environmental issues. At the forefront of these endeavors is NAGAHIRO Tsuyoshi, project professor and director of the Center for Smarttech System Co-creation in the Carbon Neutral Promotion Headquarters. Air conditioning systems enhanced by artificial intelligence (AI), or “AI smart air conditioning,” are being incorporated at facilities that use enormous amounts of energy for heating and cooling, such as airports and department stores, and have achieved significant energy saving results. We sat down with Nagahiro, who is engaged in everything from corporate collaborations to venture start-ups and practical education for promoting social implementation, to hear more about his current research and prospects for the future.

Precocial animals, the ones that move autonomously within hours after hatching or birth, have many biases they are born with that help them survive, finds a new Royal Society paper led by Queen Mary University of London. The new model proposed by the researchers suggest that naïve animals like newborn turtles and chicks are not blank slates but are supported by the presence of multiple biases that interact. 

Artificial light from major coastal cities can disrupt the nighttime biology of sharks, according to new research that provides the first-ever measurements of melatonin—a hormone tied to biological rhythms—in wild sharks.