A researcher at Osaka Metropolitan University investigated the active travel effects of an mHealth app that incentivizes daily walking. The results revealed that the mHealth app’s incentives to exchange train tickets increased users’ daily walking steps by 626.2 steps/day for five months.

Studying plant vegetative reproduction is key to increasing crop yield and for bioengineering. Kobe University research is making progress on studying the genetic regulation of the process in liverworts, which are ideal model plants and even a candidate for space crops.

A University of Waterloo study found that female pilots made fewer flight control errors than their male counterparts in high-stress situations, despite showing similar visual attention and experience. The research, led by postdoctoral fellow Naila Ayala, suggests women may exhibit stronger decision-making and control under pressure, with implications for pilot training and evaluation.

Changmin Sung, a principal researcher at the Doping Control Center at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST), announced that he and his collaborators at the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Korea University have developed a high-throughput multiplexed gene and cell doping analysis (HiMDA) based on gene scissors (CRISPR-Cas).

Researchers at the College of Design and Engineering at the National University of Singapore have developed a copper-based catalyst that significantly improves the energy efficiency of converting carbon dioxide (CO₂) into ethylene. By introducing small amounts of cobalt just beneath the catalyst surface, the team was able to alter the reaction pathway to favour ethylene formation at lower energy cost. The system achieved over 70 per cent selectivity towards ethylene with 25 per cent energy efficiency and ran stably for more than 140 hours. The breakthrough could support the development of commercially viable, low-emissions alternatives to conventional carbon-intensive ethylene production.

The treatment of gastrointestinal and urinary system diseases has long been plagued by limitations of traditional drug delivery methods, such as low drug concentration at target sites, lack of specificity in release, and short in vivo retention time, all of which result in suboptimal therapeutic efficacy. Magnetic microrobots, with their advantages of non-contact actuation, deep tissue penetration, and non-radiative operation, have emerged as ideal candidates for in vivo targeted drug delivery. However, existing manufacturing methods for magnetic robots have significant drawbacks: mold-assisted pre-deforming magnetization methods struggle to achieve complex deformations; emerging customizable fabrication techniques, such as nozzle magnetization during direct ink writing and laser-induced local remagnetization, can control the remnant magnetization of robot components to a certain extent but lack uniform and high-precision 3D magnetic fields, limiting the functional complexity and deformation accuracy of magnetic robots. To address these limitations, this study developed in-situ pixel-scale magnetic programming 3D printing technology, aiming to break through the bottlenecks of existing manufacturing techniques.

Miniaturization and weight reduction of medical wearable devices for continuous health monitoring such as heart rate, blood oxygen saturation, and sweat component analysis remain major challenges. In particular, optical sensors consume a significant amount of power for LED operation and wireless transmission, requiring heavy and bulky batteries. To overcome these limitations, KAIST researchers have developed a next-generation wearable platform that enables 24-hour continuous measurement by using ambient light as an energy source and optimizing power management according to the power environment.