Mask charger helps tackle COVID-19 crisis

Professor Greg Stephens searches for patterns in the behavior of Caenorhabditis elegans, a transparent worm about one millimeter in length. He and colleagues at Princeton University directly analyzed high-resolution videos of the worm’s movement and discovered that four prototypical shapes could account for essentially all the wiggles in the worm’s body shape during movement.  These prototypical shapes also allow for a unified description of behavior across a diverse range of worm species, which can be as genetically different from each other as we are from fish. 

I-House concluded a strategic partnership agreement with the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) in July in commemoration of our 70th anniversary and to promote initiatives addressing global issues. OIST is a pioneering graduate university and innovation hub with researchers from more than 50 countries collaborating across scientific disciplines to pioneer new approaches to discovery and problem-solving. As a first project under this partnership, we are launching a Distinguished Global Thinkers Series, inviting Dr. Svante Pääbo, OIST Professor and winner of 2022 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, as special speaker. The direct ancestors of all present-day humans originated in Africa and spread out from there and the Near East about 60000 to 70000 years ago. When they did so they encountered Neanderthals in western Eurasia and and Denisovans in eastern Eurasia, earlier forms of humans who came extinct about 40000 years ago. Dr. Svante Paabo’s group determined genome sequences of Neanderthals and Denisovans. Dr. Pääbo will discuss what genomes of our extinct evolutionary relatives tell us about the origin and history of modern humans. He will also how genetic variants inherited from Neanderthals and Denisovans influence our physiology and propensity for disease today. Speaker: Svante Pääbo (Director of Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology; Adjunct Professor, OIST) Moderator: Aiko Doden (Special Affairs Commentator of NHK/ Trustee, I-House) Language: English (with Japanese subtitles) Coorganizers：International House of Japan, Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology(OIST) Svante Pääbo Dr. Pääbo was awarded the Nobel Prize for his discoveries concerning the genomes of extinct hominins and human evolution. He is currently Director of Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and Adjunct Professor of OIST.

This video shows a polystyrene particle propelled along a microfiber by light, first in the fundamental mode, then in a higher order mode. It is easy to see how much faster the particle zips along in the higher order mode.  

This video shows a soapy mixture passing through the posts in the microfluidic platform and emerging on the right as a gel.

Researchers from the Biological Physics Theory Unit and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam conducted local linear analyses to reduce the complex posture movements of the nematode worm C. elegans to simpler components -- analogous to breaking spoken language into phonemes. The top video displays a snippet of posture behavior of C. elegans which is automatically decomposed into reversal, coiling and forward movements (bottom).