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Credit: Akihiro Ikeshita
Human ancestors nearly went extinct 900,000 years ago
A new technique analysing modern genetic data suggests that pre-humans survived in a group of only 1,280 individuals.
Credit: Reiko Kono, Keio University
Japanese fund to create ‘Ivy League’ gives first award to just one university
A plan to create an elite group of institutes has surprised researchers as government makes Tohoku University the sole recipient of grant.
Credit: OIST
Japanese research is no longer world class — here’s why
Despite a strong workforce, Japan’s research continues to slide down the indicators of quality.
Press Releases
Credit: Nobuaki Mizumoto
Homosexual termite regicide
Termites not only raid people's homes, but also the humble abodes of other happy termite couples. In new research, Kyoto University scientists have found that male Japanese termites form homosexual couples when no females are around -- and when the chance arises, they take over a heterosexual couple's nest and kill the male so that one of them can mate with the now spouseless female. The research team's observations support a theory that homosexual couplings in invertebrates have evolutionary advantages.
Credit: Nahoko Tokuyama
'Big mama' bonobos help younger females stand up for themselves
Bullying happens in the primate world too, but for young bonobo females, big mama comes to the rescue. Japanese primatologists report in Animal Behaviour that older bonobo females frequently aid younger females when males behave aggressively towards them.
Credit: Eiri Ono / Kyoto Unviersity
Fish oil helps transform fat cells from storage to burning
Researchers have found that fish oil transforms fat-storage cells into fat-burning cells, which may reduce weight gain in middle age. The team explains in Scientific Reports that fish oil activates receptors in the digestive tract, fires the sympathetic nervous system, and induces storage cells to metabolize fat.
Credit: Kyoto university
The search for happiness: Using MRI to find where happiness happens
Exercising, meditating, scouring self-help books... we go out of our way to be happy, but do we really know what happiness is?
Wataru Sato and his team at Kyoto University have found an answer from a neurological perspective. Overall happiness, according to their study, is a combination of happy emotions and satisfaction of life coming together in the precuneus, a region in the medial parietal lobe that becomes active when experiencing consciousness.