B R I N G I N G D I S COV E R Y TO L I G H T
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brain solving
mysteries
also inside Giants in history The future of holograms Sparking change through research Jellyfish: super predator genome COMPLIMENTARY COPY
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ON THE HUNT FOR PRIMORDIAL BLACK HOLES
page 30
THE QUEST FOR PERFECT QUANTUM DOT BIOMARKERS
page 22
topic 04 Technology 14 Space 26 People 36 Medicine 48
Environment
Lizards and climate page 6
Pluto's hidden ocean page 28
Levers of change page 42
Better brain studies page 52
Welcome to the 2020 edition of Credit: Petrica Ciprian Kis | 123rf
Researchers throughout Asia are gaining more precise insight into the brain, including how diseases develop and potential treatments. Cover image credit: zenina | 123rf
Asia Research News Team Magdeline Pokar Laura Petersen Aya Kawanishi Nadia El-Awady Vivien Chiam Ruth Francis Sophie Protheroe James Tyrrell Daphne Ng Kelly Haggart Phil Thornton
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Research featured in Asia Research News 2020 is based on information provided by the research institutions listed. Readers are advised to contact the researchers for additional information. All images used in whole or in part within this publication are credited to the respective image owners. ResearchSEA Limited and the Asia Research News team does not accept responsibility for any loss, damage or expenses incurred resulting from the use of information in this publication. ISSN 2042-0536 Copyright Asia Research News. We welcome you to reproduce articles in Asia Research News 2020, provided appropriate credit is given to Asia Research News and the research institutions featured.
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General: Magdeline Pokar m.pokar@researchsea.com Singapore: Vivien Chiam vivienchiam@researchsea.com
Welcome to our 12th year of Asia Research News magazine. We are pleased to bring you the latest findings in environment, technology, social sciences, space and medicine from across Asia. This year, we are fascinated by the numerous ways researchers are solving the mysteries of the brain: developing new ways to study its cellular and molecular mechanisms; learning more about how diseases develop and can be treated; even how to improve memory. Meanwhile, machine learning is making its mark on a variety of fields, including materials and medicine. We are also excited to see the advancements being made throughout the region to bolster social science research, especially in Myanmar and other developing countries. Knowing the importance of role models, we are delighted to continue
highlighting researchers from Asia in our Giants in History series. Some, you might know, but we’re willing to bet there are few who may surprise, and even inspire you. If you haven’t had a chance to visit us at our new online home, asiaresearchnews.com, please take a moment to check it out. There you can stay up-todate on research news all throughout the year. Researchers and institutions can register to share more about their work, post jobs in their labs and events they are organising. Journalists can find unique stories and sources throughout Asia. Our aim, as always, is to help facilitate meaningful connections for research. Join the Asia Research News community and spread the word about exciting research developments in Asia.
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ENVIRONMENT:
NEWS IN BRIEF
Credit: Masato Hattori
Credit: Pixabay
PLANKTON AND FISH REACT TO CLIMATE CHANGE
A NEW DUCK-BILLED DINOSAUR
Global simulations suggest plankton and fish species are showing resilience to climate change by going deeper underwater or moving to higher latitudes.
Kamuysaurus japonicus, whose nearly complete skeleton was unearthed from 72-million-year-old marine deposits in Mukawa Town in northern Japan, belongs to a new genus and is a new species of herbivorous hadrosaurid dinosaur. Credit: Kyoungchae Kim, Public Relations Team, UNIST
Credit: Clay Bolt
WORLD’S LARGEST BEE, THOUGHT EXTINCT, REDISCOVERED IN THE WILD
Researchers develop a low-cost thermoelectric material made of tin and selenium that efficiently converts waste heat into electricity with ten times higher electrical properties than a previous study.
Credit: Hokkaido University
Credit: Pixabay
With an estimated wingspan of two and a half inches, Wallace’s giant bee (Megachile pluto) is the world’s largest bee. First described by British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace in 1858, the bee had been lost to science since 1981. A single female bee was found and photographed in 2019, in an undisclosed location in the North Moluccas islands of Indonesia.
THIN FILM CONVERTS WASTE HEAT INTO ELECTRICITY
STRONG WINTER DUST STORMS MAY HAVE CAUSED THE COLLAPSE OF ANCIENT EMPIRE
Fossil coral records provide new evidence that frequent winter dust storms and a prolonged cold winter season contributed to the collapse of the Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia, which existed from 24th to 22nd century B.C.E. The 4,100-year-old coral fossil (pictured) was collected in Oman, downwind of the Mesopotamia region.
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STUDY OFFERS VERDICT FOR CHINA’S EFFORTS ON COAL EMISSIONS
China’s efforts on emission reductions, air quality improvement and human health protection were effective. Similar measures could be used in countries such as India to help them reduce emissions alongside rapid economic growth.
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ENVIRONMENT
Credit: Maciej Olszewski | 123rf
WEEVILS THWARTED BY LEAVES’ COMPLICATED GEOMETRY
The leaf shapes of certain species of the Isodon group of flowering plants act as deterrents against a leaf-rolling weevil. Female insects, which cut leaves and roll them up to provide shelter for their eggs, appear to prefer simpler shaped leaves. Credit: National University of Singapore
Japanese geochemist Katsuko Saruhashi (22 March 1920 – 29 September 2007) developed the first method and tools for measuring carbon dioxide in seawater, which became known as Saruhashi’s Table. Her work showed that the Pacific Ocean releases twice as much carbon dioxide as it absorbs, indicating that global warming could not be substantially mitigated by seawater’s capacity to absorb carbon dioxide. Saruhashi also developed a sensitive method for measuring the amounts of radioactive isotopes Cesium-137 and Strontium-90 in seawater. Her research on the radioactive fallout from nuclear testing at Bikini Atoll helped to determine limits for oceanic nuclear testing. Her childhood fascination with rain coupled with her parents' encouragement towards technical knowledge and financial independence led to her earning a degree from the Imperial Women's College of Science, now known as Toho University. Later, she was the first woman to obtain a PhD in chemistry from the University of Tokyo and the first woman elected to the Science Council of Japan. She established the Society of Japanese Women Scientists as well as the Saruhashi Prize, which is awarded yearly to a female scientist who serves as a role model for younger women scientists.
GIANTS IN HISTORY
SMARTPHONE DEVICE DETECTS HARMFUL ALGAE IN 15 MINUTES
Scientists have created a highly sensitive system combined with a smartphone that detects the presence of toxin-producing algae in water within 15 minutes.
MEASURING THE OCEANS' CAPACITY TO PROTECT THE PLANET
ASIA RE SEA RC H N EWS
Credit: Tadasu K. Yamada et al., Scientific Reports
NEW WHALE SPECIES IDENTIFIED ALONG THE COAST OF HOKKAIDO
The new beaked whale species Berardius minimus, which had long been called Kurotsuchikujira (black Baird’s beaked whale) by locals, is smaller than other Berardius species.
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ENVIRONMENT
LIZARD AND SNAKE SIZE UNRELATED TO CLIMATE The relationship between body size and climate in lizards and snakes is more complex than originally thought. For well over a century, scientists have thought climate is a key factor affecting the evolution of animal body sizes. However, a recent study has shown that, for squamates, a group of reptiles that includes lizards and snakes, there are no consistent global correlations between body size and climate. Several competing hypotheses have tried to explain the role of climate in body size evolution. The heat conservation hypothesis posits that larger body sizes in endotherm animals, which generate body heat internally, are more beneficial for heat conservation in colder, higher latitudes. This is because heat is lost more slowly as the surface-area-to-volume ratio diminishes. The water availability hypothesis suggests that larger body sizes are also beneficial for conserving water in dry habitats because the larger surfacearea-to-volume ratio means they do not
readily lose as much water. However, there is very little evidence that these patterns are true for ectotherms, animals that rely on external sources for body heat, such as reptiles. Researchers from Universiti Malaysia Sarawak collaborated with an international team of scientists to investigate these hypotheses in squamates. They used multiple analytical approaches to test the role of temperature, precipitation, seasonality and food availability as drivers of body mass using existing size and distribution data on more than 9,000 squamate species. Their analysis did not support a universal, consistent mechanism for climate-driven size evolution in squamates. Instead, they found several different patterns for different continents, squamate families, and species. For example, 53% of snake families showed evidence of a water availability hypothesis at play, with larger body sizes
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Further information
Professor Indraneil Das | E-mail: idas@unimas.my Institute of Biodiversity and Environmental Conservation Universiti Malaysia Sarawak
found in drier habitats. Also, hypotheses that were supported in most continents for snakes were not supported in most continents for lizards, and vice versa. “Our results suggest that climate is not necessarily the most important driver of size evolution in squamates,” says Indraneil Das, a conservation biologist at Universiti Malaysia Sarawak. “Many other factors may also influence body size, including competition for resources, evolutionary history and predation.” Climate may indirectly influence body size through spatial distribution, but the team cautions against adopting any climate-size relationships as general rules, at least until their generality has been properly tested on large, extensive datasets. Being able to identify predictable relationships between size and geography is key to understanding local and large-scale patterns of biodiversity.
ENVIRONMENT
Did you know?
Squamates vary drastically in size and weight, ranging from the one inch, 0.1-ounce Virgin Islands dwarf gecko, to the Komodo Dragon, which has been known to reach ten feet in length and weigh over 350 pounds.
GIANTS IN HISTORY
“I KNOW ONLY BUTTERFLIES.”
2020
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Credit: Fedor Selivanov | 123rf
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Seok Joo-myung (13 November 1908 – 6 October 1950) was a Korean butterfly entomologist who made important contributions to the taxonomy of the native butterfly species in Korea. By measuring the wing length and comparing the patterns of over 160,000 cabbage butterflies collected throughout Korea, Seok concluded that about 20 previously classified species were actually all the cabbage white butterfly. Seok organized the butterflies of Korea into about 250 species, a reduction from the 921 species categorized previously. Seok was also a linguist and proponent of non-violence. On October 6, 1950, Seok was mistaken for a communist soldier and shot. It is said that his last words were: “I know only butterflies.”
Credit: Thawat Tanhai | 123rf
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ENVIRONMENT
Did you know?
While methane is a gas also known to contribute to climate change, methane combustion actually releases less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than other fossil fuels, making it an attractive alternative. Methane is also being considered as an alternative to toxic and cancer-causing hydrazine-based fuels for propelling rocket engines.
Credit: DGIST
Credit: DGIST
A blue titania photocatalyst (blue) modified with copper and platinum nanoparticles (brown and silver) improves the conversion of carbon dioxide (black/red) and water vapour (red/white) into methane and ethane (black/white) that can be used as fuel. Oxygen is released as a byproduct (red).
CONVERTING CO2 INTO SUSTAINABLE FUELS A material aims to deliver a one-two punch: recycling atmospheric carbon dioxide for the production of more sustainable hydrocarbon fuels.
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A blue titania photocatalyst becomes much better at recycling atmospheric carbon dioxide into hydrocarbon fuels when copper and platinum nanoparticles are added to its surface. Photocatalysts are semiconducting materials that use energy from sunlight to catalyse a chemical reaction. Researchers are investigating their use to trap harmful carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to help alleviate global warming. Some also want to take the process a step further: recycling the trapped carbon dioxide into hydrocarbon fuels like methane, the main component found in natural gas. However, it has been difficult to manufacture photocatalysts that yield large enough fuel volumes for their use to be practical. Researchers at the Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology (DGIST), with colleagues in Korea, Japan, and the US, modified a blue titania photo-
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Further information
catalyst by adding copper and platinum nanoparticles to its surface. Copper adsorbs carbon dioxide well, while platinum separates the charges generated by the blue titania from the sun’s energy to catalyse the conversion of carbon dioxide into fuel. They found the modified photocatalyst was 3.3% efficient at using sunlight to convert carbon dioxide into fuel when calculated over separate 30-minute periods. This is ten times better than previous versions. The researchers note this is an important milestone, but that it will take time to make the technology commercially viable. “The current work can serve as a launch pad for developing high performance photocatalysts,” says DGIST engineer Su-Il In. The team developed a unique set up to accurately measure the catalyst’s photoconversion efficiency. They placed
Associate Professor Su-Il In | E-mail: insuil@dgist.ac.kr Department of Energy Science & Engineering Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology
the catalyst in a chamber that received a quantifiable amount of artificial sunlight. Carbon dioxide gas and water vapour moved through the chamber over the catalyst. An analyser measured the gaseous components coming out of the chamber as a result of the photocatalytic reaction. The team plans to continue its efforts to further improve the catalyst’s photoconversion efficiency, to make it thick enough to absorb all incident light, and to improve its mechanical integrity to enable easier handling. “Photovoltaics were initially considered a tough dream to realise, but now have become one of the key solutions to fossil fuels,” In says. “Similarly, we believe artificial photosynthesis will one day become a widespread technology for recycling carbon dioxide into more sustainable fuels.”
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GIANTS IN HISTORY
A HERO OF THE ENVIRONMENT
Credit: Original photograph by Bui Tuan
You just published newsworthy research. Now let’s tell the world.
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Võ Quý (31 December 1929 – 10 January 2017) was a Vietnamese ornithologist who studied the destruction of tropical forests and agricultural lands in Vietnam by Agent Orange, a herbicide used by the U.S. military during the Vietnam War. In addition to planning forest restoration projects, Quý rediscovered the rare eastern sarus crane, an endangered species that had vanished during the war. He helped establish a treaty with Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos to protect migratory birds. His other contributions include discovering a new species of pheasant and publishing more than one hundred books, including The Birds of Vietnam, the first zoological book written by a Vietnamese scientist. Quý founded several conservation organisations in Vietnam, including the Center for Natural Resources Management and Environmental Studies (CRES), Vietnam’s first environmental research and training institute. For his contributions to scientific research and environmental conservation, Quý was awarded the Blue Planet Prize in 2003 and selected as one of the Heroes of the Environment by Time Magazine in 2008.
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ENVIRONMENT
The complete genome of Nemopilema nomurai, known as Nomura’s jellyfish, has been sequenced for the first time, providing clues to the genetic basis of the structural and biochemical traits that have allowed jellyfish to colonise our planet’s waters. Nomura’s jellyfish, which can grow up to two metres in diameter, are found primarily around the coasts of China, Japan and South Korea. Since 2000, numbers have increased significantly, mainly due to global warming and a lack of natural predators. Researchers at the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) and the Korea Institute of Ocean Science and Technology (KIOST) compared the genome of Nomura’s jellyfish with those of other animals in the Cnidaria phylum, a group that also includes hydra, sea anemones and corals. “The cnidarians appear in a very im-
portant evolutionary position, as they share a common ancestor with the bilaterians, a major group of animals that includes humans, fish and insects, among others,” says UNIST geneticist Jong Bhak. Between 500 and 700 million years ago, jellyfish developed novel physiological traits that allowed them to become one of the first actively swimming predators, rather than anchored in place or passively floating. To better understand these traits, the researchers studied genomic sequences and patterns of gene expression in the umbrella-shaped main body and tentacles of the Nomura’s jellyfish, as well as looking at the genes expressed during several jellyfish life stages. The results revealed genetic adaptations associated with swimming, including genes for muscle contraction and neuronal signalling, as well as an expansion of gene families coding for venom. These
adaptations may have contributed to jellyfish mobility and active predation. One interesting finding was that jellyfish have genetic adaptations that allow them to control their bodily salt concentration at the molecular level, allowing them to move vertically and horizontally to catch food without being affected by changing ocean salinity levels. “Jellyfish have remarkable innovations that allow them to actively hunt in the water column,” says Bhak. “Our study highlights the unique traits that have contributed to the success of these animals as early multi-cellular predators.” The increasing prevalence and toxic venom of Nomura’s jellyfish means they pose a threat to fisheries and ocean ecosystems. Insights from this study could provide a basis to prevent jellyfish mass reproduction, as well as enhancing our understanding of cnidarian evolution.
GIANT JELLYFISH GENOME REVEALS EVOLUTION OF HUNTING Analysis of the Nomura’s jellyfish genome has identified unique genetic adaptations that helped them become early, successful multi-cellular predators.
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Jellyfish have remarkable innovations that allow them to actively hunt in the water column.
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Credit: UNIST
Further information
Professor Jong Bhak | E-Mail: jongbhak@genomics.org Korean Genomics Center Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology
ENVIRONMENT
+147 -106 +85 -66 +146 -110
+70 -24
N. nomurai
+162 -113
A. aurita
+139 -185
H. vulgaris
+161 -128
C. hemisphaerica
+223 A. digitifera -78
+175 -128 +2 -0 +101 -35 +11 -4
+123 -164
+13 -279 +17 -19
+20 -7
+129 -176
N. vectensis
+75 -86
H. sapiens
+150 -32
D. rerio
+45 -170
D. melanogaster
+48 -178
C. elegans
+47 T. adhaerens -437
+11 -0
+83 A. queenslandica -403
+0 -0
+49 M. leidyi -438 +5 -514
Scyphozoa
Gene family expansions and contractions in the Nemopilema genome. Numbers designate the number of gene families that have expanded (+) and contracted (−) after the split from the common ancestor.
3,827
1,082
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Venn diagram shows the number of unique and shared gene families among three cnidarian classes: Scyphozoa, Hydrozoa and Anthozoa, which include jellyfish, corals and sea anemones.
1,138 6,764
4,785
Anthozoa
2,802
625
Hydrozoa
2020
Credit: Wikimedia Commons
M. brevicollis
Credit: UNIST
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Osamu Shimomura (27 August 1928 – 19 October 2018) was a Japanese organic chemist and marine biologist who dedicated his career to understanding how organisms emitted light. Shimomura showed that the light-emitting apparatus of the Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP) in jellyfish was contained within the protein, suggesting that the GFP gene may be used as an imaging tool. Since its discovery, the GFP gene has been widely used as a tag to visualize the expression of other genes. For the discovery of GFP, Shimomura, together with Martin Chalfie and Roger Tsien, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2008.
GIANTS IN HISTORY
THE SCIENTIST WHO DISCOVERED WHY JELLYFISH GLOW
Founded in 1876 as Sapporo Agricultural College, Hokkaido University is one of the oldest, largest, and most prestigious universities in Japan. The university provides diverse degree programs for international students both in the sciences and humanities. Boasting one of the biggest and most beautiful campuses in Japan, the universiy also houses cutting-edge research facilities, a university hospital, and a wide variety of field research centers.
STAY CONNECTED @HokkaidoUni
Credit: CC BY-SA 4.0
ENVIRONMENT
IS TURMERIC PACKAGING THE FUTURE FOR SUPERMARKET SHELVES? A biodegradable biopolymer containing turmeric oil could help extend food shelf life.
Researchers in Malaysia have developed a biopolymer film incorporating turmeric oil that stops the growth of a common food fungus and degrades well in soil. The film could provide an environmentally friendly way to extend food shelf life. Turmeric is well known for its antimicrobial properties. Its bright orange root has been used in South Asian traditional medicine for thousands of years. Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) chemical engineer Junaidah Jai and colleagues were interested to see if they could use turmeric to stop the growth of the fungus Aspergillus niger, a common food contaminant. They added varying amounts of turmeric oil to biopolymer films made from cassava starch, glycerol and carboxymethylcellulose. Different thicknesses of the films were coated onto brown packaging paper, which was then incubated with A. niger spores. The researchers found
that the films were effective, with larger amounts of turmeric oil in thicker films being better at inhibiting A. niger growth. The packaging samples were also soaked in water to simulate contact with food moisture. The researchers measured the amounts of antimicrobial compounds released from the film into the water using ultraviolet spectrometry. They found that more antimicrobial compounds were released from thicker films. However, the thickest films released antimicrobial compounds too slowly, and the thinnest ones released them too quickly, making them ineffective against microorganisms that take a long time to start growing. “The right combination of turmeric oil and film thickness are essential for inhibiting microorganisms that cause food spoilage,” Jai explains. “The optimal combination will also vary based on the texture and shape of food we are trying to protect.” The researchers also tested the coated
packaging’s biodegradability by burying samples in soil that was exposed to rain and sun. They found that the packaging degraded more slowly as the turmeric oil content and film thickness increased, as the higher oil content kept soil microbes away. This continued up until the highest turmeric oil volumes, when degradation speeded up again. The researchers suggest the highest oil volumes cause faster biodegradation due to changes they cause in the film’s properties; more water is absorbed, allowing more soil microbes to penetrate the package and degrade it. “This packaging could be a green alternative to keep food fresh for longer,” says Alia Mustapha, a researcher at UiTM. The team plans to next conduct sensory tests to evaluate consumer acceptance for the packaging and the thin layer of turmeric oil that will cover food surfaces. Jai says they are looking for a collaborator to commercialize the product.
Credit: reddogs | 123rf
ASIA RE SEA RC H N EWS
Did you know?
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Fungi are responsible for an estimated 5-10% of food waste in developing countries. Credit: pinkomelet | 123rf
F. A. Mustapha | E-mail: alia534492@gmail.com Faculty of Chemical Engineering Universiti Teknologi MARA
Junaidah Jai | E-mail: junejai@uitm.edu.my Faculty of Chemical Engineering Universiti Teknologi MARA
Further information
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TEC HNOLOGY:
NEWS IN BRIEF
HIGHLY FLEXIBLE, HIGH-ENERGY TEXTILE LITHIUM BATTERY
Researchers developed a highly flexible, high-energy textile lithium battery that offers more stable, durable and safe energy supply for wearable electronics.
Credit: Hailong Fan et al., Nature Communications
Credit: Dmitry Kalinovsky | 123rf
Temperature control of pore sizes in nanomaterials could lead to improved gas separation and storage applications. Butterfly-shaped ligands were the key to designing the material that can selectively absorb and store different gas molecules.
Credit: PolyU
Credit: Illustration by Izumi Mindy Takamiya
MATERIALS THAT OPEN IN THE HEAT OF THE MOMENT
GETTING GLUED IN THE SEA
New bio-inspired hydrogels can act like superglue in highly ionic environments such as seawater, overcoming issues in currently available marine adhesives.
AI FOR TRAFFIC CONDITIONS
An artificial intelligence technology can predict traffic conditions for the next 5 to 15 minutes at an error rate of less than four kilometers an hour. Credit: DGIST
Credit: Milosh Kojadinovich | 123rf
ELECTRONIC SKIN FEELS PAIN
Researchers developed an electronic skin technology that detects prick and hot pain sensations. The skin is expected to be used for humanoid robots that need five human senses and patients wearing prosthetic hands.
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BLEACH-INDUCED TRANSFORMATION FOR HUMIDITY-DURABLE AIR FILTERS
A molecule-trapping material that normally degrades in water remains stable after two years of humidity exposure when treated with a common skin bleach.
TO READ MORE: ASIARESEARCHNEWS.COM/MAGAZINE/2020
TEC HNOLOGY
TAGGING FOR METAL ALLOYS Machine learning approaches are being used to automatically tag microscopic structures in pictures of steel alloys.
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2
Credit: NIMS
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The three types of alloy microstructures identified in microscopic images. 1. Ferrite/Pearlite 2. Ferrite/Pearlite/Bainite 3. Bainite/Martensite
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per second. The variable cooling rates led to the formation of different microstructures within the steel. Expert metallurgists manually identified three types of microstructures in microscopic images of the alloys: ferrite/pearlite, ferrite/ pearlite/bainite, and bainite/martensite. Sub-phases of ferrite were also identified. The images were processed and then run through several machine learning models, using algorithms to train them to recognize and label the images. The team found a machine learning classification method, called Random forest, made the most accurate predictions of alloy microstructure. This method could be applied to a wide range of metals in both research and industry settings. “There is much hope this machine learning method will assist in automating microstructure analysis using large datasets and in the development of new materials with desired mechanical properties,” Bulgarevich says.
ASIA RE SEA RC H N EWS
Materials scientists in Japan are developing a technique that recognizes and labels detailed microscopic structures inside welded steel, much like some applications tag friends in your photos. The approach could help accelerate our understanding of metal properties, while also paving the way for designing new materials. “Metallurgists are very interested in analysing material microstructures because they determine their properties,” says Dmitry Bulgarevich of Japan’s National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS). “Most of the data for these studies comes from optical or electron microscopy imaging techniques that can produce an overwhelming amount of information.” A team of materials scientists from NIMS and the University of Tokyo explored the use of machine learning to rapidly analyse these large amounts of data. They prepared steel alloys made from carbon, silicon, manganese, phosphorus and sulphur by cooling them from 1400°C at different rates: 0.3°C, 1°C, 3°C, or 10°C
Credit: bonumopus | 123rf
Shunichi Hishita | E-mail: hishita.shunichi@nims.go.jp Science and Technology of Advanced Materials National Institute for Materials Science
Dmitry S. Bulgarevich | E-mail: bulgarevich.dmitry@nims.go.jp Research and Services Division of Materials Data and Integrated System National Institute for Materials Science
Further information
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TEC HNOLOGY
COMPUTING WITH SPINS OF LIGHT Vortex-like flows of light particles within an optical fibre could help solve the unsolvable.
ASIA RE SEA RC H N EWS
A laser system that generates spinning light particles could lead to the strong kind of computational power needed to solve complex biological problems. The system, which improves on previous ones, is described in the journal Quantum Science and Technology. Some problems are too large and complex for even modern-day computers to solve. The traveling salesman problem is a typical example. This problem asks: Given a list of cities and distances between each pair, what is the shortest possible route that visits each city and returns to the city of origin? As the number of cities to visit increases, the possible number of routes to choose from becomes exponentially higher, taking more and more time to solve. A modern computer would take one billion years to solve a 60-city problem. To try to solve complex problems faster, physicists are turning to spin sys-
tems, which are simplified models that describe the interactions between particles in a material. In the ‘XY model’ of a spin system, particles form vortex-like patterns around multiple focal points. Imagine several drains in a large bathtub, with unidirectional flows of water going down each drain. Complex problems that involve directional data can be simulated by creating a physical system that emulates this XY model. This sort of system could be used, for example, to predict the angles between bonds within a protein, determining how it is folded, for drug discovery and synthesis. It could significantly reduce the time needed to conduct complex probabilistic computing. Physicist Yutaka Takeda of the Tokyo University of Science and colleagues in Japan improved an experimental set up that emulates the XY model. Their design features a laser system that gen-
erates pulses of light particles within a one-kilometre-long optical fibre cavity. The pulses are generated using a ‘nondegenerate optical parametric oscillator network’, which ultimately generates 5,000 spins, i.e. flows of light particles going down 5,000 different drains, within the cavity. It enables long simulations over several minutes within a stable system. This improves on previous oscillators that produced only 100 spins and simulation times that were limited to several tens of milliseconds. The team demonstrated the spinning light particles within the optical fibre cavity accurately correspond to an XY model. “We hope that our work will motivate research in computation with physical systems and in algorithms that involve continuous and directional data,” the researchers conclude.
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Further information
Simon Davies | E-mail: simon.davies@ioppublishing.org Senior PR Officer IOP Publishing
TEC HNOLOGY
PHOTON SIEVE WIDENS VIEW OF DYNAMIC HOLOGRAMS The design boosts the image appeal of LCD-generated holographic scenes while retaining the popular flat-panel format.
Computer-generated holographic images can be better seen from the side thanks to a thin metal film with millions of tiny pinholes. This ‘photon sieve’ could one day enable dynamic 3D images to be viewed on mobile devices. Researchers at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in collaboration with SAIT Samsung Electronics placed an array of sub-micron apertures over a commercial LCD panel illuminated from behind with a laser. Light is diffracted widely as it exits the pinholes, allowing holograms to be clearly seen within a viewing angle of 30 degrees. Users looking at the same scene with the photon sieve removed would experience holograms with a viewing angle of just a few degrees. “The present demonstration is the first flat-panel holographic display capable of displaying a large-sized image with a wide viewing angle,” says YongKeun Park, who has expertise in holographic microscopy and leads the Biomedical Optics Laboratory at KAIST.
SKINNY 3D ASIA RE SEA RC H N EWS
Visually captivating, holograms have immediate appeal as an entertainment medium, but their potential does not stop there. “3D images contain a wealth of information, making holograms useful for observing changes in systems,” explains Park. “Displays made using holographic recording techniques could be used for remote surgery, headup displays for cars, augmented and virtual reality, and more.”
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Further information
Professor YongKeun Park | E-mail: yk.park@kaist.ac.kr Biomedical Optics Laboratory Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology
TEC HNOLOGY
Change in diffraction angle
With photon sieve
Viewing Zone
Screen size
Without photon sieve
With photon sieve Non-periodic photon sieve
Observation plane
Light diffraction allows expanded viewing angle of holograms. Credit: KAIST
A
B
Holographic displays could provide a comfortable, headset-free solution for users in home and work environments. Park anticipates viewers gathering round a flat-panel holographic display, much like people watch a TV or computer screen today. The rapid advancement of LCDs replacing clunky tube-based TV and computer monitors motivated Park to develop a practical, attractive design for a flat-panel holographic display. “Making a thin device has become one of the most essential criteria for the display industry,” he notes.
PINHOLE POWERED
A Researchers placed an array of sub-micron apertures over a commercial LCD panel illuminated from behind with a laser. Light is diffracted as it exits the photon sieve pinholes, allowing holograms to be clearly seen within a viewing angle of 30 degrees. B Photo and dimensions of the set up.
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Credit: KAIST
A key feature of the 3D photon sieve is that each pinhole is positioned to correspond to a pixel in the LCD panel. This means the optical field scattered from each pinhole can be independently modulated pixel-by-pixel, providing finer control of the hologram image. The pinholes were made using focused ion beams for this study, but can also be manufactured using more cost-effective methods in the future. Each aperture in the array is pseudo-randomly oriented to reduce the likelihood of image distortion and duplication. The precise patterning of the pinhole array makes the device’s calibration and operation more straightforward.
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TEC HNOLOGY Continued from page 19
Displays made using holographic recording techniques could be used for remote surgery, head-up displays for cars, augmented and virtual reality, and more.
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FIRST IMAGES
The scientists programmed their device to generate holograms of a singlecolour tetrahedron and of a rotating cube featuring red, green and blue elements. The images were produced using a 1024 x 768 pixel display without colour filters. Colours were applied via so-called space division multiplexing: randomly and evenly assigning pixels on the LCD panel to manage light from red, green or blue laser beams aimed at the apparatus. One of the design’s main challenges is screen brightness. As much as 95% of the light shown through the display
other approaches, such as incorporating micro-lenses into their design. “These could help focus the incident light into the pinholes and enhance transmittance,” explains Park. Borrowing techniques used to pattern microchips, the photon sieve, which is just 300 nanometres thick and is supported by a glass substrate, is relatively easy to manufacture and scalable. Also, the design features a commercial LCD panel, which adds to its practical appeal. “Our technique can be easily integrated into the current LCD production pro-
Dynamic three-colour holographic images of a rotating cube. is blocked by the photon sieve. In their proof-of-concept experiments, reported in Nature Communications, the scientists used a high-power laser to boost image visibility, but they are also considering
cess and is a promising approach towards thin holographic displays,” says Park. The researchers will continue to refine the technology, building on the platform’s industrial promise.
Know who is interested
Credit: National Academy of Science and Technology Philippines
GIANTS IN HISTORY
THE FATHER OF VIDEOCONFERENCING Gregorio Y. Zara (8 March 1902 – 15 October 1978) was a Filipino engineer and physicist best remembered for inventing the first two-way video telephone. Zara’s video telephone invention enabled the caller and recipient to see each other while conversing, laying the foundation for video-conferencing. Zara was an outstanding student who graduated valedictorian in elementary and high school before obtaining a scholarship to study mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He went on to graduate with highest distinction in aeronautical engineering and physics from the University of Michigan and the University of Paris, respectively. Zara held 30 patents for devices and equipment. Other notable creations include an induction compass used by pilots for direction, a solar-powered water heater and an alcohol-fuelled aeroplane engine. Zara also discovered a law of electrical kinetic resistance known as the Zara effect.
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TEC HNOLOGY
THE QUEST FOR PERFECT QUANTUM DOT BIOMARKERS Tiny nanoparticles can illuminate tissues and cells, but safer, more effective materials are needed before their mainstream application.
Shanmugavel Chinnathambi (right) and Naoto Shirahata (second from right) discuss with colleagues a key feature needed to enhance the intensity of light emitted by their quantum dots. ASIA RE SEA RC H N EWS
The race is on to develop perfect quantum dots for looking inside cells and living tissues. These tiny, nanosized particles made from semiconductor materials fluoresce when exposed to light. This property makes them attractive for a variety of applications, including LED displays and solar cells. But for biological imaging, researchers still need to develop non-toxic quantum dots that can shine brightly deep inside tissues. Quantum dots have been investigated for tagging tissues since 1998, but in vivo deep-tissue imaging is “still extremely limited, due to their toxicity to the environment and the human body,” says Naoto Shirahata, a chemist at Japan’s National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS). Shirahata and Shanmugavel Chinnathambi, a research fellow at the NIMS International Center for Young Scientists, analysed the latest advancements in quantum dot biomarkers for the journal Science and Technology of Advanced Materials.
Near-infrared-emitting quantum dots made from cadmium, selenide, mercury, tellurium and lead exhibit bright luminescence, but their toxicity is a major drawback. Scientists have tried to overcome this problem by coating quantum dots made from these materials with a protective, non-toxic shell, yet the results were unsatisfactory. Silicon quantum dots, on the other hand, are non-toxic even at high concentrations, and have good tissue penetration under certain conditions. Scientists think they can improve this material by modifying its surface chemistry for highly selective tumour targeting. Germanium quantum dots are also interesting non-toxic candidates, but their emission is still too faint. Shirahata, Shanmugavel and their colleagues are striving to improve the optical performance of non-toxic quantum dots. They are testing surface chemistry modifications to better target specific cells in the body. They also want to find ways to improve the body’s ability to safely metabolize quantum dots after their job is done. “Silicon quantum dots in particular are promising,” says Shirahata, “because they are safe and can be metabolized with the urea cycle in the liver and the kidney.”
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Background: Quantum dots made of cadmium sulfide emit ultraviolet and blue wavelengths of light. Toxicity remains a concern for biological applications. Credit: Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, US Department of Energy
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Further information
Professor Naoto Shirahata Krishan| Lal E-mail: | E-mail: shirahata.naoto@nims.go.jp cochairkr@gmail.com International IAP for Science Center Co-Chair for Materials Nanoarchitectonics InterAcademy National Institute Partnership for Materials Science
Shunichi Hishita | E-mail: hishita.shunichi@nims.go.jp Science and Technology of Advanced Materials National Institute for Materials Science
Did you know?
Silicon quantum dots are a strong contender for safe bioimaging. They are non-toxic even at concentrations 15 times higher than leadbased quantum dots with just a silicon-oxide coating.
TEC HNOLOGY
MAKING NEW CATALYSTS FROM UNIQUE METALLIC ALLOYS Playing with the elements of magnetic alloys can lead to effective industrial catalysts.
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Heusler alloys are magnetic materials made from three different metals that are not magnetic individually. The alloys are used broadly for their magnetic and thermoelectric properties, and their ability to regain their original shape after being deformed, known as shape memory. Investigations by Tohoku University’s advanced materials scientist An-Pang Tsai and colleagues now show that these materials can also be fine-tuned to speed up chemical reactions. This catalytic capability is reviewed in the journal Science and Technology of Advanced Materials. Heusler alloys have a typical composition of two parts metal X, one part metal Y, and one part metal Z (X2YZ). Each of the three come from a distinct region of the periodic table of elements. The original Heusler alloy, discovered in 1898, was Cu2MnAl, made from copper, manganese and aluminium. Many other combinations of metals were later found within the X2YZ arrangement. While Tsai and his colleagues were investigating another type of structure, called quasicrystals, in the late 1980s, they created a series of new compounds by substituting
existing elements with others from their same groups in the periodic table, as long as they had a similar atomic size. They later applied this concept to fabricate a large number of new Heusler alloys. Tsai and his colleagues investigated the potential of 12 Heusler alloys as catalysts for propyne hydrogenation, a reaction that is used in the plastics industry, and for the oxidation of carbon monoxide, an important process for controlling pollution. They used relatively inexpensive elements to fabricate their alloys and found promising catalysts that were very selective for propyne hydrogenation. These involved a combination of cobalt for metal X, manganese or iron for metal Y, and gallium or germanium for metal Z. The team suspected that the alloys’ catalytic properties could be fine-tuned for specific target reactions. They also found that metal X is the main active element in these reactions, while elements Y and Z are involved in the catalyst’s activity, selectivity and durability. Some alloys, like one made from cobalt,
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Further information
Alok Singh | E-mail: alok.singh@nims.go.jp Research Center for Structural Materials National Institute for Materials Science
Shunichi Hishita | E-mail: hishita.shunichi@nims.go.jp Science and Technology of Advanced Materials National Institute for Materials Science
TEC HNOLOGY
IN REMEMBRANCE
AN-PANG TSAI (1958–2019)
Credit: Alok Singh
Professor An-Pang Tsai (right) discovered the first stable quasicrystal following the research by Israeli Nobel Prize Laureate Dan Shechtman (left) on metastable quasicrystals.
Professor An-Pang Tsai of Japan’s Tohoku University was one of the first scientists to establish the importance of quasicrystals: crystal-like materials with irregularly repeating atomic patterns. Tsai discovered the first stable quasicrystal in 1987 while working on his PhD, after which he discovered many more. His work opened the door for understanding their structures and physical properties. Quasicrystals are now used in a variety of applications, including surgical instruments and LED lights. Professor Tsai received many awards during his illustrious career, including the Medal of Honor with Purple Ribbon by the Government of Japan. Many of his colleagues believe his work warranted a Nobel Prize nomination. Professor Tsai passed away on 25 May 2019 at the age of 60.
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titanium and tin, also showed promise for carbon monoxide oxidation. Tsai and his colleagues believe materials informatics, which uses big data to discover new materials, could be particularly relevant for the discovery of new catalysts from Heusler alloys because of their well-defined arrangement. Future research is expected to focus on incorporating nanoparticles containing catalytic elements into the crystal lattice of Heusler alloys. This would increase the surface area available for catalytic reactions, improving the material’s catalytic activity. “It was Professor Tsai’s passion to play with elements and create new materials, with huge successes from early on,” says Alok Singh of Japan’s National Institute for Materials Science. “He has patented his recent works, and we hope to see them in operation in collaboration with industry. In the meantime, his colleagues will keep working on their development, with their progress inspiring further work.”
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Credit: xraygd
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S PAC E : N E W S I N B R I E F
An experiment shows that one of the basic units of life, nucleobases, could have originated within giant gas clouds interspersed between the stars.
Astronomers have detected a stealthy black hole from its effects on an interstellar gas cloud. This intermediate mass black hole is one of over 100 million quiet black holes expected to be lurking in our galaxy. These results provide a new method to search for other hidden black holes and help us understand the growth and evolution of black holes.
Japanese researchers contributed to paradigm-shifting observations of the gargantuan black hole at the heart of distant galaxy Messier 87. One of the telescopes, ALMA, is operated through international collaboration between East Asia, Europe, and North America. The National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) developed the data transmission instrument for ALMA to deliver the massive data taken with the array to its base facility.
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Astronomers have found a molecular cloud that is collapsing to form two massive protostars that will eventually become a binary star system. This observation shows that binary stars form together.
FUSION SCIENCE AND ASTRONOMY ENABLES INVESTIGATION OF THE ORIGIN OF HEAVY ELEMENTS A team of experts in nuclear fusion and astronomy has computed high-accuracy atomic data for analyzing light from a kilonova, a birth place of heavy elements. They found that their new data set could predict kilonovae brightness with much better accuracy than before. This aids our understanding of the cosmic origins of heavy elements. Credit: Yoshihiro Furukawa
Credit: EHT Collaboration
HOW ASIA HELPED CAPTURE FIRST IMAGE OF A BLACK HOLE
SPIRALING GIANTS: WITNESSING THE BIRTH OF A MASSIVE BINARY STAR SYSTEM
Credit: NAOJ
Credit: NAOJ
HIDING BLACK HOLE FOUND
Credit: RIKEN, ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), Zhang et al.
Credit: Hokkaido University
LIFE’S BUILDING BLOCKS MAY HAVE FORMED IN INTERSTELLAR CLOUDS
SUGAR DELIVERED TO EARTH FROM SPACE
A new study has discovered meteorites containing RNA sugar, ribose, and other bio-important sugars, the first direct evidence of bio-essential sugars' delivery from space to the Earth.
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Credit: ESO/A. Roquette
GIANTS IN HISTORY
THE CHEMIST WHO PROBED THE ORIGINS OF LIFE Cyril Andrew Ponnamperuma (16 October 1923 – 20 December 1994) was a Sri Lankan chemist who was interested in the origins of life on Earth. His research in chemical evolution showed how inanimate molecules may have given rise to the building blocks of life, a process known as abiogenesis. About 4 billion years ago, chemicals from Earth’s atmosphere came in contact with energy in warm oceans. In this 'primordial soup', atoms and molecules came together to form the precursors of life, which subsequently evolved into living things. While at Ames Laboratory, Ponnamperuma synthesized the building blocks of RNA and DNA as well as the universal energy currency ATP, further showing that organic matter may have originated from chemical compounds. Later in his career, Ponnamperuma embraced the idea that hydrothermal deep-sea vents were the cradles of life, where early organisms exploited chemical gradients to drive synthesis of ATP. Ponnamperuma was also actively involved in astrobiology research and was the principal investigator for analysis of lunar soil brought to Earth by Project Apollo.
FIRST DETECTION OF GAMMA-RAY BURST AFTERGLOW IN VERY-HIGH-ENERGY GAMMA LIGHT
An international team of researchers have observed a gamma-ray burst, an extremely energetic flash following a cosmological cataclysm, emitting very-high-energy gammarays long after the initial explosion. Credit: Kagoshima University
PLANETS AROUND A BLACK HOLE? CALCULATIONS SHOW POSSIBILITY OF BIZARRE WORLDS
Theoreticians in two different fields defied the common knowledge that planets orbit stars like the Sun. They proposed the possibility of thousands of planets around a supermassive black hole. Credit: UNIST
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ORIGINS OF ULTRA-HIGH-ENERGY COSMIC RAY HOTSPOT
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Credit: NASA
Among many particles arriving from outer space, there are ones with the extremely high energy that travel at nearly the speed of light. A new study, based on measurements from the Telescope Array experiment (pictured), suggests that those particles come from the filaments of galaxies connected to the Virgo Cluster.
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GAS COULD UNDERGROUND Credit: (Pluto) NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/Alex Parker
A gassy insulating layer beneath the icy surfaces of distant celestial objects could mean there are more oceans in the universe than previously thought. Computer simulations have provided compelling evidence that an insulating layer of gas hydrates could keep a subsurface ocean from freezing beneath Pluto’s icy exterior. Similar gas hydrate insulating layers could also be maintaining longlived subsurface oceans in other relatively large but minimally heated icy moons and distant celestial objects. “This could mean there are more oceans in the universe than previously thought, making the existence of extraterrestrial life more plausible,” says Hokkaido University planetary scientist Shunichi Kamata. In July 2015, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft flew through Pluto’s system, providing the first ever close-up images of this distant dwarf planet and its moons. The images showed Pluto’s unexpected topography, including an unevenly
surfaced basin roughly the size of Texas. Named Sputnik Planitia, the whitecoloured, ellipsoidal basin is located near the equator. Because of its location and topography, scientists believe a subsurface ocean exists beneath Sputnik Planitia’s ice shell. However, these observations are contradictory to the age of the dwarf planet: an underground ocean should have frozen a long time ago. Researchers in Japan and the USA considered what could keep a subsurface ocean warm on Pluto while keeping the ice shell’s inner surface frozen and uneven. The team hypothesized that an insulating layer of gas hydrates exists beneath the surface of Sputnik Planitia. Gas hydrates are crystalline, ice-like solids formed of gas trapped within molecular water cages. They are highly viscous, have low thermal
The proposed interior structure of Pluto. A thin clathrate (gas) hydrate layer works as a thermal insulator between the subsurface ocean and the ice shell, keeping the ocean from freezing.
Spin axis Pluto-Charon tidal axis
Orbital axis
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The bright heart shape on Pluto is located near the equator. Its left half is a big basin dubbed Sputnik Planitia.
Topography (km)
Credit: (Figure Images) NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute
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Further information
Associate Professor Shunichi Kamata | E-mail: kamata@sci.hokudai.ac.jp Graduate School of Science Hokkaido University
Natural colour images of Pluto taken by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft in 2015.
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BE INSULATING AN OCEAN ON PLUTO Nitrogen-rich ice Water-rich ice Clathrate hydrate Subsurface ocean Rocky core Kamata, S. et al. Pluto’s ocean is capped and insulated by gas hydrates. Nature Geoscience 12, 407–410 (2019).
conductivity, and could act as an insulator. The researchers conducted computer simulations covering a timescale starting 4.6 billion years ago, when the solar system began to form. The simulations showed the thermal and structural evolution of Pluto’s interior and the time required for a subsurface ocean to freeze and for the icy shell covering it to become uniformly thick. They simulated two scenarios: one where an insulating layer of gas hydrates existed between the ocean and the icy shell, and one where it did not. The simulations showed that, without a gas hydrate insulating layer, the subsurface sea would have frozen completely hundreds of millions of years ago; but with one, it hardly freezes at all. Also, it takes about one million years for a uni-
formly thick ice crust to completely form over the ocean, but with a gas hydrate insulating layer, it takes more than one billion years. The simulation’s results support the possibility of a long-lived liquid ocean existing beneath the icy crust of Sputnik Planitia. The team believes that methane from Pluto’s rocky core is the most likely gas present inside the hypothesized insulating layer. This theory, in which methane is trapped as a gas hydrate, is consistent with the unusual composition of Pluto’s methane-poor and nitrogen-rich atmosphere. Kamata and his colleagues plan to continue looking for other subsurface oceans. “The idea that our research suggests is not only new, but also universal,” Kamata says. “I would like to solve many more mysteries of the universe by applying our versatile idea to other celestial objects.”
Credit: Yu Kikuchi
2020
(From the left) Atsushi Tani of Kobe University, and Shunichi Kamata and Kiyoshi Kuramoto of Hokkaido University from the research team.
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This could mean there are more oceans in the universe than previously thought, making the existence of extraterrestrial life more plausible.
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ON THE HUNT FOR PRIMORDIAL BLACK HOLES Searching for tiny, ancient black holes proposed by Stephen Hawking to see if they might be dark matter.
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The theory that dark matter could be made of primordial black holes a fraction of a millimetre in size has been ruled out by a team of researchers led by the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU). In 1974, physicist Stephen Hawking described how primordial black holes could have formed in the fraction of a second after the Big Bang. Primordial black holes could have masses ranging from a tiny speck to 100,000 times our sun. In contrast, supermassive black holes detected by astronomical observations started forming at least hundreds of thousands of years later, and are millions or billions times larger than our sun. Since primordial black holes of any size have not been detected, they have
been an intriguing candidate for elusive dark matter. As far as we currently know, matter that makes up humans, plants, the Earth, other planets, stars and galaxies only makes up 5% of all matter in the universe. The rest is either dark matter (27%) or dark energy (68%), both of which have not yet been physically detected. But researchers are confident that dark matter exists because we can see its effect on our universe. Without the gravitational force from dark matter, the stars in our Milky Way Galaxy would be flying apart. To test the theory that primordial black holes, specifically those about the mass of the moon or less, could be dark matter, Kavli IPMU researchers Masahiro
Credit: HSC Project / NAOJ
Further information
Principal Investigator Masahiro Takada | E-mail: press@ipmu.jp Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe University of Tokyo
Takada, Naoki Yasuda, Hiroko Niikura and collaborators from Japan, India and the USA searched for these tiny black holes between Earth and the Andromeda Galaxy, Earth’s closest neighbour galaxy 2.5 million light years away. “What made me interested in this project was the tremendous impact it would have on uncovering the nature of dark matter,” says Niikura. “Discovering primordial black holes would be a historical achievement. Even a negative result would be valuable information for researchers piecing together the scenario of how the universe began.” To look for black holes, the team used the ‘gravitational lensing effect’. Gravitational lenses were first explained by Albert
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Data from the star which showed characteristics of being magnified by a potential gravitational lens, possibly by a primordial black hole. About 4 hours after data taking on the Subaru Telescope began, one star began to shine brighter. Less than an hour later, the star reached peak brightness before becoming dimmer.
Brightness of a star
(Credit: Niikura et al.)
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Hawaii. If dark matter is made of primordial black holes and, in this case, ones lighter than the moon, the researchers expected to find 1,000 gravitational microlenses. They calculated this estimate by assuming dark matter in the entire galaxy’s halo is made up of primordial black holes, and taking into consideration the number of stars in the Andromeda Galaxy that could be affected by a primordial black hole, and finally the chances of their equipment capturing a gravitational microlens event. The telescope photographed 90 million stars. It took two years for the team to filter out all of the noise and non-gravitational lens events from the data. In the end, they could only identify one star that brightened then dimmed – suggesting a possible
primordial black hole – meaning it is unlikely that they make up all of dark matter. Even so, Niikura explains that there is still a lot to learn about primordial black holes. The researchers had only debunked the theory for a specific mass: black holes with a mass similar to or less than the moon. Previous studies have ruled out other masses, or to what extent they could account for dark matter. But there is still a chance that primordial black holes of varying sizes might be out there. The analytical approach developed by the Kavli team could be used in future primordial black hole studies, including trying to determine if black holes discovered by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave-Observatory (LIGO) in the USA could in fact be primordial.
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Einstein, who said it was possible for an image of a distant object, such as a star, to become distorted due to the gravitational effect of a massive object between the star and Earth. The massive object’s gravity could act like a magnifying glass lens, bending the star’s light and making it appear brighter or distorted to human observers on Earth. Because a star, a black hole and the Earth are constantly moving in interstellar space, a star would gradually grow brighter, then dimmer to observers on Earth, as it moves across the path of a gravitational lens. So the researchers captured 190 consecutive images of the entire Andromeda Galaxy, thanks to the Hyper Suprime-Cam digital camera on the Subaru Telescope in
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GRAVITY MYSTERIES Silly questions lead to surprising answers about the fundamental nature of the universe. We might have been getting it wrong this whole time. Symmetry has been one of the guiding principles in physicists’ search for fundamental laws of nature. What does it mean that laws of nature have symmetry? It means that laws look the same before and after an operation, similar to a mirror reflection, the same but right is now left in the reflection. Physicists have been looking for laws that explain both the microscopic world of elementary particles and the macroscopic world of the universe and the Big Bang at its beginning, expecting that such fundamental laws should have symmetry in all circumstances. However, last year, two physicists found a theoretical proof that, at the most fundamental level, nature does not respect symmetry.
HOW DID THEY DO IT? GRAVITY AND HOLOGRAM.
There are four fundamental forces in the physical world: electromagnetism, strong force, weak force, and gravity. Gravity is the only force still unexplainable at the quantum level. Its effects on big objects, such as planets or stars, are relatively easy to see, but things get complicated when one tries to understand gravity in the small world of elementary particles. To try to understand gravity on the quantum level, Hirosi Ooguri, the director of the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe in Tokyo, and Daniel Harlow, an assistant professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, started with the holographic princi-
ple. This principle explains three-dimensional phenomena influenced by gravity on a two-dimensional flat space that is not influenced by gravity. This is not a real representation of our universe, but it is close enough to help researchers study its basic aspects. The pair then showed how quantum error correcting codes, which explain how three-dimensional gravitational phenomena pop out from two dimensions, like holograms, are not compatible with any symmetry; meaning such symmetry cannot be possible in quantum gravity. They published their conclusion in 2019, garnering high praise from journal editors and significant media attention. But how did such an idea come to be?
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Hirosi Ooguri, director of Kavli IPMU, explains how he and his collaborator theoretically proved that nature has no symmetry when quantum gravity is considered.
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Further information
Principal Investigator Hirosi Ooguri | E-mail: press@ipmu.jp Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe University of Tokyo
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Did you know?
There are four fundamental forces in the physical world: electromagnetism, strong force, weak force, and gravity. Gravity is the only force still unexplainable at the quantum level.
It started well over four years ago, when Ooguri came across a paper about holography and its relation to quantum error correcting codes by Harlow, who was then a post doc at Harvard University. Soon after, the two met at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton when Ooguri was there on sabbatical and Harlow came to give a seminar. “I went to his seminar prepared with questions,” Ooguri says. “We discussed a lot afterwards, and then we started thinking maybe this idea he had can be used to explain one of the fundamental properties of quantum gravity, about the lack of symmetry.” New research collaborations and ideas are often born from such conversations, says Ooguri, who is also a professor at the California Institute of Technology in the
USA. Ooguri travels at least once a fortnight to give lectures, attend conferences, workshops and other events. While some might wonder if all that travel detracts from concentrating on research, Ooguri believes quite the opposite. “Scientific progress is serendipitous,” he says. “It often happens in a way that you don’t expect. That kind of development is still very hard to achieve by remote exchange. “Yes, nowadays it’s easier with e-mails and video conferences,” he continues, “but when you write an e-mail you have to have something to write about. When
someone is in the same building, I can walk across the hallway and ask silly questions.” These silly questions are key to progress in fundamental sciences. Unlike other fields, such as applied science where researchers work towards a specific goal, the first question or idea a theoretical physicist comes up with is usually not the right one, Ooguri says. But, through discussion, other researchers ask questions derived from their curiosity, taking the research in a new direction, landing on a very interesting question, which has an even more interesting answer.
The researchers showed that symmetry only affects the shaded regions in the diagram, not around the spot in the middle, thus there cannot be global symmetry.
A SIA RESEA RC H NEW S 2020
Credit: Kavli IPMU
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The science of communication You’ve got questions about communicating research to the public and media. We’ve got answers. Our blog, Beyond the Journal, offers expert advice for researchers and public information officers on a range of issues, including: Credit: Wikimedia Commons
GIANTS IN HISTORY
THE PHYSICIST WHO MEASURED RADIOACTIVE DECAY
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Chien-Shiung Wu (31 May 1912 – 16 February 1997) was an experimental physicist who made several important contributions to nuclear physics. Wu worked on the Manhattan Project, the top-secret nuclear weapon research and development program during World War II, helping develop a process for separating uranium into U235 and U238. She also developed improved Geiger counters to measure nuclear radiation levels. Among her contributions, Wu is best known for designing the Wu experiment, in which she measured the decay of supercooled radioactive cobalt to investigate if symmetry was conserved in the behaviour of atomic particles. Her findings showed that symmetry was not conserved, contradicting the law of Conservation of Parity. In 1978, Wu was awarded the inaugural Wolf Prize, a prestigious award which recognizes achievements in the interest of mankind and friendly relations among people ... irrespective of nationality, race, colour, religion, sex or political views." For her research on radioactivity, Wu is often referred to as the ‘Chinese Marie Curie.’
Managing a massive research news story Communications in times of crisis Preparing for interviews Telling tales: how scientists can use stories Networking at conferences: breaking into the circle
All of these, and more at: asiaresearchnews.com/blog
Credit: Micha Klootwijk | 123rf
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GIANTS IN HISTORY
THE SCIENTIST WHO ENABLED THE PRECISE MEASUREMENT OF WEATHER
We will guide you
Credit: World Meteorological Organization
Anna Mani (23 August 1918 – 16 August 2001) was an Indian meteorologist who contributed significantly to the understanding of solar radiation, ozone and wind energy by developing a wide range of measurement tools. One of India’s pioneering female scientists, Mani excelled in the male-dominated area of meteorology and became the Deputy Director-General of the India Meteorological Department. She also held several important positions in the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Mani’s early research on the spectroscopy of diamonds and rubies at the Indian Institute of Science resulted in five research papers and a PhD dissertation. However, she was not awarded a PhD as she did not have a Master’s degree. Undaunted, Mani studied meteorological instruments at Imperial College London. Dedicated to accuracy, she became an expert at designing meteorological instruments, such as ozone and radiation measuring devices, and started a company to manufacture them. Also passionate about nature, trekking and bird-watching, Mani advised young professionals this way: “We have only one life. First equip yourself for the job, make full use of your talents and then love and enjoy the work, making the most of being out of doors and in contact with nature.”
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PEOPLE: NEWS IN BRIEF
Credit: christianchan | 123rf
PARENTAL GENDER ATTITUDES LINKED TO GIRLS' REDUCED UNIVERSITY PARTICIPATION
Stereotypical gender role attitudes and negative images of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields by Japanese parents may be associated with girls’ reduced university participation. Credit: HKBU
Credit: LSE Commons
GIANTS IN HISTORY
THE ECONOMIST WHO HIGHLIGHTED THE IMPORTANCE OF AGRICULTURE NEW TANGRAM GAMES TEST CHILDREN’S VISUAL-RELATED LITERACY SKILLS
A new series of games can be used to train and test children’s reading, writing and word identification skills at an early age. Based on the principles of traditional Chinese tangram games, the new method enables teachers and parents to easily identify children with early visual processing difficulties so additional support can be provided. Credit: S. Ricci
COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE OF MODERN HUMANS OVER NEANDERTHALS Researchers have found the earliest evidence of mechanically delivered projectile weapons in Europe, dating to 45,000-40,000 years ago. The finding indicates that the spearthrower and bow-and-arrow technologies allowed modern humans to hunt more successfully than Neanderthals, giving them a competitive advantage.
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U Hla Myint (1920-2017) was a celebrated economist from Myanmar who taught at the University of Oxford and London School of Economics (LSE). Considered a prodigy, he was admitted to Rangoon University to study economics when he was just 14 years old. He went on to earn a PhD from LSE. His thesis formed the foundation of his book, A Theory of Welfare Economics, which strongly influenced the field. Hla Myint highlighted the importance of free trade, capital accumulation and international specialization for economic development. He particularly stressed the importance of improving agriculture first, which helped provide the foundation for rapid growth in other Asian countries, such as Taiwan and South Korea. He tried to return to teach and work in Myanmar several times, but conflict and political turmoil pushed him back to the UK. For example, shortly after independence from Britain in 1948, he was drafted to serve as Myanmar’s economic advisor, but found his advice unheeded by the new government, which paid farmers less for rice than the world market price. Despite the struggles, Hla Myint was cautiously optimistic about Myanmar’s economic development. He maintained that the progress, although slow, could prevent the country from returning to economic isolation.
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In a nation-wide survey conducted by Osaka University, 15% of respondents could not answer a single financial literacy question correctly.
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SCHOOLS AND MEDIA KEY TO CUTTING FINANCIAL ILLITERACY Japan’s government should invest in financial literacy programmes in schools and the media to help people make better decisions about savings, investment and pensions.
relationship between those with anxiety about aging and improved literacy. The overall results suggested socialisation and future orientation — the extent to which people prioritise the future over the present or past — had a profound impact on the acquisition of financial literacy in Japan. Socialising financial education through television programmes, training programmes, and newspaper articles can help people learn about finance, the researchers say. “More focus on financial education in schools is needed,” Kadoya says, pointing to earlier research showing that financial education programmes at the school level were neither well organised nor taught by specially trained teachers. “Awareness about the need for financial literacy early in life could ensure that people understand the benefits of making better financial decisions,” he says.
Professor Yoshihiko Kadoya | E-mail: ykadoya@hiroshima-u.ac.jp Graduate School of Social Sciences Hiroshima University
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levels of financial literacy. It was also the first comprehensive research into the factors affecting financial literacy in Japan. “The findings of other countries cannot be naively applied to Japan,” Kadoya says. The researchers found that gender, age and education significantly affected how good Japanese people were at making financial decisions. Men are significantly more financially literate than women, while older people tend to be better at making money decisions, although that ability peaks at middle age. The researchers also looked at psychological factors and found that people who put more weight on the future compared with the past or present were more financially literate. The researchers had expected that people who worry about life after they turn 65 would seek out information about how to be financially secure through their retirement years. To their surprise, there was no direct
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Japan’s government should set up special programmes to teach financial literacy in schools and through the media, according to researchers who carried out a detailed study of the causes of low levels of ability in handling money. They found that levels of financial literacy — understanding the value of money and how to maximise the benefits of using it — depended on people’s exposure to finance in social settings and on how much priority they put on the future compared to the present. The findings came from analysis by Hiroshima University economists Yoshihiko Kadoya and Mostafa Saidur Rahim Khan of 3,905 responses to a nationwide survey in Japan. While previous studies have shown that financial literacy improves household decisions such as savings, retirement planning, and investments, this was one of the first to look at which factors determined
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SPARKING CHANGE THROUGH RESEARCH Social scientists in Myanmar seeking to understand the factors that influence women’s participation in politics and the economy are finding that, before they can study, first they must inform.
The words ‘gender equality’ are not really in the Burmese language, nor in the more than 200 other languages and dialects spoken in the ethnically diverse country of Myanmar. This poses a challenge to researchers in Myanmar studying gender equality concepts – such as women’s participation in politics and economic opportunities – as part of Knowledge for Democracy Myanmar (K4DM), a five-year research initiative supported by Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC). “It’s a new concept,” says Whitney Huntley, a social scientist at the Myanmar Institute for Integrated Development (MIID), one of the five groups studying gender issues for K4DM. “This project has
SHIFTING MINDSETS
MIID is seeking to learn how decisions are made within households and local villages in Shan state, a region spanning seven ethnic groups and nine languages. The non-profit trains local community members to conduct formal research interviews and focus group discussions in their own communities and languages. In addition to research methodology training, the community members requested more information to better understand gender equality concepts. MIID partnered with another leading research group in Myanmar and a K4DM
participant, Gender Equality Network (GEN), to provide gender awareness training. The trainings highlighted how assumptions about gender roles are built into cultural norms and how, while sometimes discrimination or imbalances can be obvious, many times they are more subtle. Attitudes and mindsets are already beginning to shift. “I used to see women are those who are lower than man. Now I know that both men and women are equal,” said one man from the Parami Development Network from the southern Shan region, after the training. A woman from Mawk Kon Local Development Organization in eastern Shan shared how she learned gender norms are built into almost everything.
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allowed communities to reflect on gender dynamics and power.”
Further information
Knowledge for Democracy Myanmar Initiative May Pannchi International Development Research Centre Myanmar Institute for Integrated Development E-mail: myanmar@idrc.ca E-mail: mpannchi@mmiid.org GET 6 CONTACTS FROM LAST YEAR
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MYANMAR’S GENDER EQUALITY GAP BY THE NUMBERS
HIGHLIGHTING THE UNKNOWN
Ranking on the Global Gender Gap Index, which measures gender disparities across health, education, economic and political criteria, and ranks 149 countries from the smallest to largest gender gaps.
31%
The national gap between women’s resources and opportunities compared to men’s, about the global average.
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Global ranking for equal political empowerment out of 149 countries, the least equal in Asia.
12%
Percentage of women in parliament in 2019, according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union.
BUILDING A ROBUST RESEARCH CULTURE
Myanmar held its first openly contested elections since 1988 in November 2015. To support the transition to a robust democracy, IDRC’s K4DM initiative aims to emphasize evidence-based policies
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Other organisations working with IDRC’s K4DM initiative report similar experiences of raising awareness in the course of their research. For example, the Myanmar Institute of Gender Studies (MIGS) is surveying men and women about their budget preferences. When the researchers asked how local, state and national governments should allocate money for public services, such as education, healthcare and infrastructure, they found many respondents had no expectation that governments could spend on services traditionally handled by women, including childcare or eldercare. Khin Ma Ma Myo, director of MIGS, explains that, along with collecting high quality data, they are raising awareness about how gender equality is not just a human rights issue, but can be prioritized throughout government sectors in the way funding is allocated. In other cases, research is likely to help raise awareness about blind spots once results come out. Enlightened Myanmar Research Foundation (EMReF) is analysing how political parties recruit and nominate candidates, particularly women. Initial findings show the need for clear policies or programs to encourage more female candidates to run for office.
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Source: World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap 2018 Report
“I also realized that sometimes what I [say] can be considered as discrimination, although I did not really intend to do so,” she said. Now, both women and men are analysing their own organisations for ways to improve gender equality and sharing what they’ve learned with their communities.
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Khin Ma Ma Myo Myanmar Institute of Gender Studies E-mail: khinmamamyo@gmail.com
May Sabe Phyu Gender Equality Network E-mail: gen.phyuphyu@gmail.com
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PEOPLE Continued from page 39
and boost women’s participation at all levels of policymaking. Part of this effort is building research capacity within the country: providing people in Myanmar the skills and tools to conduct social science research. The five non-profit groups participating in K4DM are training others who help carry out the research. This also helps lead to stronger social science research, which relies on honest responses. “When asking sensitive questions about gender equality in ethnic communities, there has to be trust,” says MIID’s Huntley. “Having local people do the research
in every stage of the project in order to make sure they are on board from the beginning and feel like it is their project,” says Soe Myat Tun, a researcher at Gender Equality Network (GEN), which is analysing the barriers and pathways to women’s participation in politics at the local, state and national levels. Among other challenges for researchers: transportation to villages around the country can be extremely difficult and safety concerns due to ongoing conflicts. Sometimes local leaders or community members worry that they could lose their jobs if they
GROWING OPTIMISM
in their own language is important, both to respect community leaders and to generate quality data.”
answer questions, or are suspicious of how the information will be used. A lot of time is also spent translating survey questions into multiple languages to ensure that they mean the same thing, thus making the data comparable. The Myanmar Institute for Peace and Security (MIPS) is surveying men and women about service delivery, such as healthcare, security and education, and how those services are impacted by decentralization and ethnic conflicts. MIPS executive director Min Zaw Oo previously managed research field surveys in war zones for the US government. “That was easier than field surveys in Myanmar,” he says.
ideas with members of the public and university students. Charlotte Galloway, director of Australia National University’s Myanmar Research Centre, which co-hosted the conference, notes the change. “We couldn’t have had a forum anything like this even three or four years ago,” she says. “Not for lack of interest by academics; the environment did not allow it.” The conversations are happening. Questions are being asked. Mindsets are shifting. Now, all eyes are on the 2020 elections to see what’s next for Myanmar, its democracy and its research environment.
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There are still many challenges to conducting research in Myanmar. For example, if researchers want government and policymakers to accept their study results as legitimate and to take action, they typically need prior approval from one or more government agencies for their projects. This can be difficult and cause delays, but some see a silver lining. “We really want our research to be translated into policy, not sit on the shelf, so we work together with policymakers
Further information
Min Zaw Oo Myanmar Institute for Peace and Security E-mail: mzo@mips-mm.org
The researchers are working to overcome the challenges and plan to report their findings next year. While conducting research in the field can be difficult, there is an air of optimism around increasing levels of curiosity and openness. This was especially apparent at a social science research conference about managing challenges during Myanmar’s transition to democracy, held at the University of Yangon in 2019. Researchers from Myanmar, Australia and China presented their work and openly exchanged
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BUILDING RESEARCH CAPACITY For decades, Myanmar lived under a dictatorship and isolation that curtailed freedom of expression. This included academics who did not have the freedom nor training to ask or address critical questions about development. Now, as Myanmar transitions to democracy, efforts are underway to rebuild a robust academic research culture.
Credit: Myanmar Information Management Unit
LANGUAGES OF MYANMAR
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Myanmar is an ethnically and linguistically diverse country, with more than 200 languages and dialects. The map above shows where different languages are spoken, according to self-reported data collected by Ethnologue and the Language & Social Development Organization. This diversity presents a challenge for social science researchers to ensure survey questions have consistent meanings across languages. The teams supported by K4DM work specifically in the following languages and dialects: Shan (3 dialects: Tai Khun, Tai Loi, Tai Li), Ta-ang (Rojin), Lahu, Akha, Danu, Pa-O (Taungyoe), Intha, Chin, Kayin, Burmese and English.
To support those efforts, IDRC facilitates training and mentorship programs for social scientists. Seventeen academics from the University of Mandalay are working with Chiang Mai University in Thailand and McGill University in Canada on social science research theories and methods, as well as presenting and communicating their research at conferences and events. For example, the social scientists presented posters about their ongoing research projects at a Knowledge Marketplace in Yangon (pictured). As educators, they can also pass this knowledge and experience onto their students, and so the spirit of inquiry continues to grow.
Myat Thet Thitsar Enlightened Myanmar Research Foundation E-mail: myatthet.thitsar@emref.org
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FINDING LEVERS OF CHANGE
Assessing the social science research landscape of developing countries reveals key challenges to building strong and influential research systems.
Credit: Neil Baynes/GDN
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Unlike many other developing countries, almost no social science research is done in Myanmar’s higher education institutions, according to an analysis by the Centre for Economic and Social Development (CESD). The bulk of social science research currently produced in the country is done by private research groups or non-profit organisations, primarily funded by international donors. “It is not that there is nothing there, but the absence of anything to measure was alarming,” says Nyein Chan Aung, the technology and communications officer for CESD.
Further information
Researchers who conducted the Doing Research assessments in Indonesia, Bolivia, Myanmar and Nigeria discussed their findings at the 2019 Global Development Network conference.
The finding comes as part of the Doing Research initiative launched by the Global Development Network (GDN) to systematically assess how features of a nation’s research system affect production, dissemination and uptake of quality social science research. Social science can provide evidenced-based insight into everyday lives, informing policies that advance social and economic development. However, very little is known about how social science research happens in developing countries, and how much policymakers use data to design laws and programs.
Francesco Obino | E-Mail: fobino@gdn.int Head of Programs Global Development Network
To address this information gap, GDN developed a comprehensive framework to map a nation’s social science research landscape. The methodology, which is carried out by local teams, identifies who is producing, communicating and using social science research, and to what extent, based on a set of common criteria. “Only by looking at the whole system can we identify the actual levers of change,” says Francesco Obino, head of programs at GDN. The Doing Research program began in 2014 and included 13 countries in the first pilot phase. A standardised methodology
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Did you know?
Less than 10% of academics in Myanmar actively engage in social science research.
for national assessments was expanded in 2018 and 2019 to Bolivia, Indonesia, Nigeria and Myanmar.
COMMON CHALLENGES
NO DEMAND
All four teams also reported a lack of demand for high quality social science research by policymakers. This was especially true in Bolivia where there is little interaction between policymakers and researchers, as well as scarce professional opportunities. “Social science research is not considered an attractive career,” explains Sharim Ribera Camacho, research associate with the Center for the Studies of Social and Economic Realities. “The task of conducting research and pursuing a career as a researcher is very difficult, particularly due to lack of local sources of financing.” Developing a coordinated, national research agenda could help make better use of funds, and raise the profile and demand for social science evidence to
Did you know?
LACK OF TRUST
In Myanmar, lack of trust is the largest barrier to policymakers using social science research. “Policymakers don’t trust researchers,” says Jana-Chin Rue Glutting, a visiting researcher with CESD. “They don’t know the outcome of what they are going to publish, or what it is for.” Some local communities in Myanmar do use local research, which could help build positive momentum engendering trust of social science research at the national level, Glutting says. A coordinated agenda could also help, but only around topics the government will be likely to embrace, not politically sensitive issues. Academics at universities also need to
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Nigeria is the second largest producer of social science research papers in Africa, following South Africa.
inform public policy, she says. In contrast, Nigeria has government-funded research agencies to respond to requests by the legislature. Yet there is still very little uptake, or use, of social science evidence in policymaking. Academics need to focus on producing quality data that addresses societal issues and be trained to clearly communicate with policymakers, says Abiodun Egbetokun, assistant director of research at the National Centre for Technology Management.
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While Myanmar’s results were unique, preliminary findings reported by the four latest countries revealed some common challenges. Unsurprisingly, lack of funding for social science research was an issue across the board. All teams reported that government funding for research is limited, and social sciences are an after-thought to science, technology and engineering. Funding for social science research often comes from international donor organisations, but there is widespread concern that donors heavily focus on hot topics, rather than allowing locals to determine research priorities. This leads to some areas becoming overly researched, and forces some researchers to follow the whims of donor organisations, rather than developing their own areas of expertise. One organisation, Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC), is partnering with GDN to help break that cycle. IDRC funded Myanmar’s Doing Research assessment, planning to use the results to help strategically identify what support is needed and where
resources can be most useful. While not many international donors focus on strengthening social science research systems, it was a natural fit for IDRC. “IDRC’s mandate is to fund research that will promote growth, reduce poverty, and drive large-scale positive change,” says Anindya Chatterjee, regional director for IDRC’s Asia office. “Building knowledge ecosystems in different places is one of our organisational priorities.”
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be brought out of isolation and join the national conversation, which could help re-establish Myanmar’s historically robust research culture.
REBUILDING TRUST
Indonesia has different challenges regarding trust. There, social science research has been politicized to support different candidates, spawning distrust of data and facts, says Inaya Rakhmani, an associate professor at the Universitas Indonesia and researcher at the Centre for Innovation Policy and Governance. And while Indonesia’s national budget for science and innovation has doubled in recent years, there are concerns that the government retains too tight control of the research agenda, limiting academic freedom. For example, they are concerned that international collaboration could be inhibited by requiring foreign academics to obtain government permits to collect data in Indonesia. Rakhmani and her colleagues recommend that funding and training be spread throughout the Indonesian archipelago, not just in a few universities in Jakarta, so that researchers throughout the country can contribute high-quality social science
research. While it may take time for that research to be used well in policymaking, mentoring individual researchers could gradually strengthen Indonesia’s research environment. “Mentoring can create momentum,” Rakhmani says. “When it is practiced on the everyday level, it builds a network.”
STEPS FORWARD
The local teams note that simply conducting the Doing Research survey generated excitement among local researchers to work together to improve the impact social science research can have in their countries. “This is the first step towards action,” Ribera says. GDN plans to secure funding to expand the program to many more countries, and facilitate comparative analysis across countries and regions. “Once we identify levers and obstacles for change at the national level,” Obino says, “we would want to understand whether there are also regional or global levers we can use to support the environment for quality social research and its impact on development.”
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The Doing Research assessments aim to systematically map the social science research landscape of developing countries, and identify how to better connect social science with policymaking.
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JAPANESE AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING RESEARCH ON DEVELOPMENT The 2019 Japanese Award for Outstanding Research on Development was awarded to Emmanuel Yujuico, a senior consultant with Access Health International Philippines, for investigating how evidence-based research influences public health policy. The project was awarded first place, with US$30,000 to support the research project. Second place, with US$10,000, was awarded to Saravana Jaikumar, assistant professor at the India Institute of Management Calcutta to analyse the use of social media to produce,
disseminate and enhance uptake of development research. Third place, with US$5,000, was awarded to Ruhizal Roosli, a senior lecturer at Universiti Sains Malaysia to study effective implementation of web-based tools to manage reconstruction projects in South-East Asia following disasters. More than 53 proposals were submitted for the 2019 competition, which is organized by the Global Development Network with funding from the Japanese government. Since it began in 2000, the program has provided more than US$4 million in research grants supporting more than 8,000 researchers in developing countries.
PEOPLE
Raising a child with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is challenging, and support systems can be difficult to access. In Malaysia, growing numbers of children are being referred to medical specialists, while enrolments in special needs programmes doubled between 2006 and
about the condition. One father shared his experience of his son throwing tantrums at the shopping complex: “In Malaysia, we can see that people were not so comfortable with my son’s tantrums and difficult behaviour. From the way they stared at us, we know.”
2013. Yet most research on the condition has focused on the developed world and little is known about the experiences of parents in Malaysia. Researchers from Universiti Teknologi MARA, Monash University Malaysia, and colleagues wanted to learn more about Malaysian parents’ experiences raising children who have ASD. They interviewed 22 parents of 16 primary-school-age children with ASD about their initial reaction to their child’s symptoms and diagnosis, their awareness about ASD, how family life was affected, their coping strategies and becoming resilient. Initially, more than half the parents sought help when they noticed differences in their children’s behaviour or delays in development. Plans and routines were adjusted, along with expectations for their children’s futures. Inadequacies in the medical and education system contributed to a significant amount of parental stress. They found it difficult to find support, interventions, and therapies, in part due to a lack of knowledge about autism among health professionals. Poor information and resources characterized the entire journey, from diagnosis to trying to access treatment and support. Parents felt they faced social stigma and often felt judged or that they were labelled as a bad parent by their community due to the public’s lack of awareness
The majority of parents said they were ignorant about autism when they first received their child’s diagnosis, but they informed themselves, and more than two-thirds felt the power of knowledge helped them cope. Their resilience grew as they experienced difficulties and positive experiences from interactions within the family and their communities, and with society and government. Nearly half of the parents felt there were direct positive impacts as a result of having a child with ASD: spouses relied on each other more and became closer, while communication and a sense of connectedness improved across the family. The researchers held workshops to share the outcomes of their study with colleagues, parents, educators, health practitioners, university students and the public. They believe their family-centric approach is crucial to understanding families with ASD, and recommend that the Malaysian government improves autism awareness across the healthcare and education sectors. “These findings lend support to the importance of acknowledging the culture-specific components that might influence how parents perceive, give meaning and adapt,” says Kartini Ilias, a clinical psychologist at Universiti Teknologi MARA. “They might also help inform parents in other Asian countries, such as Singapore, Indonesia and Vietnam.”
GETTING A NEW PERSPECTIVE ON AUTISM
Credit: GENIUS Kurnia
Children with autism and their parents participate in an early intervention program at GENIUS Kurnia in Malaysia.
Further information
2020
Dr Kartini Ilias | E-mail: kartini_ilias@uitm.edu.my Faculty of Health Sciences Universiti Teknologi MARA
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Credit: GENIUS Kurnia
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PEOPLE
WHAT MAKES A CITIZEN?
Debate over granting Malaysian citizenship to sea gypsies who have historically lived along the coast, long before Malaysia was a country, raises fundamental questions about citizenship. Malaysia is a relatively young country, be bestowed on the basis of human rights established in 1963 by the states of Sabah, or humanitarian grounds,” says Marshall. Malaya, Sarawak and Singapore (which “This situation now adversely impacts later became independent). Issues of upon the right of the Bajau Laut as a de citizenship are still highly contentious, par- jure stateless community to claim citizenticularly in the state of Sabah, which has ship in Malaysia.” become home to a large number of legal The Bajau Laut, also known as sea gypand illegal immigrants. sies, are a community of seafaring peoples who have historically lived on boats that roamed freely between the waters off Sabah, which now belongs to Malaysia, and the Sulu Archipelago, which now belongs to the Philippines. They are stateless, effectively rendered as illegal immigrants in Malaysia despite many of these peoples living off or on Sabah’s coast. Sanen Marshall and colleagues at The Bajau Laut belong to a larger Universiti Malaysia Sabah argue that the ethno-linguistic community known as Government of Malaysia’s concept of the Sama Bajau, which spans both the citizenship is overly legalistic, perhaps Philippines and Sabah. According to the to the detriment of the descendants of 2005 census in Sabah, 350,000 Sama people who had very close ties to Sabah: Bajau lived in the state at the time. But the Bajau Laut. it is much more difficult to pin down “The Malaysian state continues to argue the numbers of people belonging to the for the exclusive right to bestow the ‘priv- Bajau Laut subgroup. ilege’ of citizenship, which it claims cannot
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Further information
Sanen Marshall | E-mail: sanenmarshall@gmail.com Centre for the Promotion of Knowledge and Language Learning Universiti Malaysia Sabah
While some people express support for integrating the Bajau Laut into the community and granting them Malaysian citizenship, those opposed argue they could “collude” with the Philippines. Marshall argues this doesn’t make sense; the state has already granted citizenship to tens of thousands of largely Muslim immigrants from the southern Philippines. As of 2010, the state’s population rose 390% as a direct result of these and other immigrations. Citizenship has enabled these immigrants to cast their votes in fiercely contested Sabah state elections, where voting has, on key occasions, tended to be along religious lines. The main political fissure in these elections tends to be between indigenous Muslim and non-Muslim voters. Marshall and his co-authors also argue that unofficial acts of citizenship sometimes speak louder than official documents. For example, in 2013, a 200-strong group of armed militants entered a remote village on the eastern
Reach the right people coast of Sabah. They were descendants of the now defunct Sultanate of Sulu, which ruled a group of islands between Malaysia and the Philippines. The militants claimed their leader was heir to the Sulu throne. They were eventually quashed by the Malaysian Armed Forces, but the dispute over their historical right to Sabah as their home continues.
The Bajau Laut have an even more clearcut but peaceful claim. “At some point in the distant past, a group of nomadic sea gypsies elected to reside predominantly in the waters of Sabah. Was that not an act of citizenship?” Marshall asks. Marshall continues to focus on the rights of the Bajau Laut in Malaysia. He presented a paper on the subject at the 2019 International Conference on Bajau and Maritime Affairs in Southeast Asia. He has also begun an initiative that aims to revive the neglected art of mat weaving among displaced, urban-dwelling Bajau Laut.
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MEDICINE:
NEWS IN BRIEF
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Credit: Hokkaido University
SONG-LEARNING NEURONS IDENTIFIED IN SONGBIRDS
HOW CHRONIC STRESS CAUSES BRAIN DAMAGE
Researchers find that chronic stress induces autophagic death of adult hippocampal neural stem cells. The insight could guide development of early treatment options for stress-associated brain diseases.
Credit: DGIST
Credit: Illustration by Mindy Takamiya
A group of neurons called the corticobasal ganglia projecting neurons are important for vocal learning in young birds, but not in adult birds. Juvenile zebra finches with disrupted projection neurons could not copy song patterns and developed unusual songs with inconsistent sequences.
POTENTIAL THERAPEUTIC TARGET FOR OBESITY TREATMENT
Researchers find that inhibiting a mitochondrial protein in tanycytes increases energy expenditure in the body and decreases appetite, which could be investigated as a potential target for treating obesity.
SAFER, EFFECTIVE CANCER RADIATION THERAPY USING X-RAYS AND NANOPARTICLES An element called gadolinium delivered into cancer cells releases killer electrons when hit by specially tuned X-rays. The approach could pave the way towards a new cancer radiation therapy that minimizes side effects.
A new genetic databank has been established containing the completed whole-genome sequencing data of close to 5,000 Singaporeans. It provides valuable insights on the unique genetic diversity of Asian populations that could enable more accurate diagnosis of genetic diseases, empower the research of chronic diseases and guide prevention and targeted therapies.
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Credit: Kimura S. et al., Journal of Experimental Medicine
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WORLD’S LARGEST WHOLE GENOME SEQUENCING OF MULTI-ETHNIC ASIAN POPULATIONS
IDENTIFYING A KEY PLAYER IN GUT DEFENSE DEVELOPMENT
Researchers have identified a protein critical to the immune system development and antibody production in mice, which could contribute to understanding the gut defense mechanism in infants.
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MEDICINE
Credit: Xin-Ni Lim, Emerging Infectious Diseases Programme, Duke-NUS Medical School
DENGUE VIRUS BECOMING RESISTANT TO VACCINES AND THERAPEUTICS
Researchers have discovered that the dengue virus changes its shape through mutations of its envelope protein to evade vaccines and therapeutics. This could give rise to new approaches in vaccine development and treatment for dengue disease. Credit: Yusuke Sato, Tokyo Institute of Technology
NEW DNA AMPLIFICATION CAPSULE HOLDS PROMISE FOR FIGHTING DISEASES
A new method amplifies DNA at body temperature within artificial cells that resemble those of humans. DNA amplification, a molecular photocopying technique where genetic material is replicated, is useful for detecting and identifying certain forms of cancer and viral diseases, and holds promise for treating these diseases in the future.
Credit: Wikimedia Commons/Xinhua News Agency
GIANTS IN HISTORY
THE SCIENTIST WHO DISCOVERED ARTEMISININ
Credit: Tohoku University
Tu Youyou (born 30 December 1930) is a Chinese pharmaceutical scientist who was awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for her work on extracting artemisin from sweet wormwood to treat malaria. Tu performed her research during the Cultural Revolution in China, when scientists were persecuted. Trained in traditional Chinese medicine, she screened over 2,000 traditional Chinese recipes and made 380 herbal extracts from 200 herbs before discovering that artemisinin from sweet wormwood could inhibit the malaria parasite. Her work has helped save millions of lives in South China, Southeast Asia, Africa, and South America where malaria is prevalent. She is shown here talking with her tutor Lou Zhicen at the China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences in the 1950s.
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ATTACKING METASTATIC BREAST CANCER WITH SOUND
Drugs can be safely delivered to cancerous lymph nodes via the lymphatic system and then released inside the nodes using sound waves.
2020
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MEDICINE Credit: zenina | 123rf
THE GENE RESPONSIBLE FOR COGNITIVE DEFECTS IN DOWN SYNDROME New findings could lead the way towards treatments for intellectual disability in Down syndrome.
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Learning and memory impairments in a Down syndrome mouse model were reversed by correcting expression of a gene that influences the generation of new neurons in the brain. The finding could pave the way to treat the cognitive impairment associated with the syndrome in humans. Adult neurogenesis is the process of generating new neurons in the adult brain. Defects in this process have been observed in various animal models of neurological disorders including schizophrenia, depression, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and neurodevelopmental disorders such as Down syndrome. But the precise cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying adult neurogenesis and their links to neurological disorders are not well understood. Molecular neurobiologist Kyung-Tai Min at Korea’s Ulsan National Institute Further information
of Science and Technology and his colleagues found that interactions between a gene called the Down syndrome critical region 1 (DSCR1) and two other molecules, TET1 and miRNA-124, were necessary for adult neurogenesis and were important in learning and memory. DSCR1 is known for its involvement in learning and memory and is overexpressed in Down syndrome. TET1, which is an enzyme, and miRNA-124, which is a micro-RNA, are known for having roles in adult neurogenesis, but the details were not clear. Min and his team have now found how the three molecules work together to regulate adult neurogenesis. They showed that DSCR1 binds to a non-coding section of TET1 RNA, subsequently controlling expression of TET1 proteins, which then regulate miRNA-124 expression levels. This process is required
Professor Kyung-Tai Min | E-mail: ktaimin@unist.ac.kr Department of Biological Sciences Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology
for adult neurogenesis and for maintaining learning and memory abilities. Knocking out DSCR1 in mice led to increased TET1 levels, and ultimately increased miRNA-124 expression. Correcting TET1 levels in these mice prevented defective adult neurogenesis. Also, adult neurogenesis, and learning and memory impairments improved in a mouse model of Down syndrome when the scientists restored DSCR1 levels. The findings reveal that precise regulation of DSCR1 and the interplay between TET1 and miRNA-124 are crucial for normal adult neurogenesis. “Our findings not only provide a basic understanding of the mechanisms regulating adult neurogenesis, but will also contribute to the development of a novel therapy for the cognitive deficits manifested in Down syndrome patients,” says Min.
MEDICINE
PURER, SAFER DRUGS BY REMOVING THE EVIL TWIN A new method could speed up drug discovery and lead to purer, side-effect-free medications.
Credit: Hong Kong Baptist University
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Associate Professor Zhifeng Huang | E-mail: zfhuang@hkbu.edu.hk Department of Physics Hong Kong Baptist University
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A new technique amplifies optical signals coming from molecules in pharmaceuticals in just five minutes. The process could help remove undesired molecules to improve the production and quality control of pharmaceutical manufacturing. Medicinal drugs contain ‘chiral’ molecules with R and S configurations. These molecules are mirror images of each other but are otherwise identical, and can have very different effects. For example, the S version of the antiinflammatory drug naproxen can treat arthritis pain, while its mirror R version is toxic to the liver. Selecting only useful chiral molecules during drug manufacturing could help produce pure drugs that do not induce adverse effects. This involves detecting differences in the optical signals coming from each chiral molecule. The problem is that the signals are usually very weak, making their detection difficult and time consuming. To overcome this, researchers at Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU) and their collaborators at Soochow University in China and King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia designed a material consisting of silver chiral nanoparticles. When chiral molecules attach to their corresponding silver chiral nanoparticles, their signal is amplified by almost ten times. This speeds up the detection process, and makes it more accurate and less expensive. “We have developed a nanomaterial that uses a simple, one-step fabrication method to sensitively detect target drug molecules in just five minutes,” says HKBU materials scientist Zhifeng Huang. The novel nanomaterial will eventually provide a new platform for efficiently and effectively analysing the purity of synthesised compounds, and will help to produce drugs without side effects, says HKBU chemist Ken Leung.
Associate Professor Ken Leung | E-mail: cfleung@hkbu.edu.hk Department of Chemistry Hong Kong Baptist University
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ALL-IN-ONE DEVICE FOR BETTER BRAIN STUDIES An implantable device has the potential to revolutionize how neuroscientists study the brain and treat diseases.
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Neuroscientists have long dreamed of being able to control brain circuitry remotely as a way to improve long-term animal studies of neurological diseases and complex social behaviours, such as Parkinson’s disease and autism. While recent progress has been made in terms of drug delivery and precise control of neurons, most systems have been plagued with shortcomings. Researchers at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Washington in the U.S., have developed a new device that promises to dramatically improve how neuroscientists study the mouse brain, which is often the first step toward human studies and drug development. The small ‘optofluidic’ device can deliver drugs directly into the mouse brain for extended periods of time allowing longterm study of developmental and degenerative disorders. It can also turn targeted brain cells on and off with coloured light, which enables researchers to study specific neural pathways without affecting other parts of the brain. All of this is remotely controlled from a smartphone application.
The remote-controlled, wireless system means animals can move around uninhibited, which is important for studying movement disorders and social behaviour. It also enables individualized wireless drug delivery to nearby animals, and multiple, ongoing studies running side-byside in limited laboratory space. This was unthinkable in the past. “Having a tool that enables several different studies running in the same room at the same time without direct human interference can help accelerate the pace of research and the process of drug development,” says Jae-Woong Jeong, a KAIST biomedical engineer who led the work.
WHAT’S DIFFERENT ABOUT THIS IMPLANT?
Traditionally, tiny metal tubes, called cannulas, have been used to deliver drugs to the brain, invariably inflaming and damaging brain tissue. To address this, Jeong and his team developed soft, ultrathin, microfluidic probes made from a silicon-based organic polymer commonly found in contact lenses.
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Credit: KAIST
Credit: alexmit | 123rf
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Professor Jae-Woong Jeong | E-mail: jjeong1@kaist.ac.kr School of Electrical Engineering Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology
A smartphone app enables wireless, remote-control of multiple experiments at the same time.
MEDICINE Also, previous wireless drug delivery devices contained a limited supply of drugs and studies usually ended when the drugs ran out. In this new device, drugs are supplied via a detachable cartridge that closely resembles a standard 2 × 2 Lego brick, that sits on top of the mouse’s head. The cartridge’s four reservoirs can be filled with different drugs, which are independently controlled and flow through separate channels within the microfluidic probe when individual pads beneath them are heated. Changing the drug reservoir is easier than changing the ink cartridge on your printer: simply unplug the used cartridge and plug in the new one. This setup allows unlimited and long-term delivery of multiple drugs.
BUT THAT’S NOT ALL
Credit: KAIST
2020
The drug cartridge resembles a Lego brick with four reservoirs that can contain different drugs. An ultrathin microfluidic probe extends into the brain to deliver the drugs. This part is made from a soft, silicon-based organic polymer commonly found in contact lenses. The tip is surrounded by micro-LEDs to also control cells with light (bottom).
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The implant also has the ability to turn targeted nerve cells, or neurons, on and off using light. Optogenetics is a technique used by neuroscientists to control specific neurons by adding light-sensitive ion channels to cell membranes via genetic modifications. Exposing the channels to blue or orange light will either excite or inhibit the neurons. Jeong and his team installed blue and orange micro LEDs around the microfluidic probe, which are also controlled by the smartphone app. Combining microfluidic drug delivery and optogenetic control of individual neurons into one ‘optofluidic’ device is a major step forward for neuroscience research. But perhaps what makes the new device truly unique and game changing is the integrated, battery-powered Bluetooth Low Energy module and the smartphone app that connects to it. The system allows programmed or manual control of each drug reservoir and each micro LED for multiple devices at the same time. The device solves many of the problems that have given scientists trouble in the past, making it possible, for the first time, to perform several long-term studies with live animals simultaneously. For example, in their proof-of-concept experiments, researchers used optogenetics to make multiple, nearby, freely moving mice prefer specific locations, and blocked the process in other mice using timely drug delivery. In a separate study, they confirmed the potential longevity of the device by delivering drugs that regulated motor function for at least a month without losing effectiveness.
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Engineering a reliable plug-nplay interface on such a small scale was a major challenge.
mer’s disease. Long-term testing of a drug or combination of drugs without needing to switch animals or perform additional implant surgeries will likely yield more accurate assessments of the effects drugs have on chronic diseases. For some neuroscientists, the largest benefit will be the wireless design allowing complete freedom of movement, which can improve the study of complex social behaviour. This is particularly necessary when testing how drugs affect interactions in animal models of mental and social dis-
BETTER TECHNOLOGY LEADS TO IMPROVED STUDIES
orders, such as depression, autism spectrum disorders, and schizophrenia. Drug development is a slow process that goes through rigorous study in animals before human clinical trials. The wireless technology and easy control of individualized drug delivery to numerous animals can also enable the simultaneous coordination of multiple experiments, thus increasing research throughput and speeding up the process.
The proof-of-concept experiments are just a taste of what this new device can do. Jeong points out that because of the improved design, neuroscientists will be able to more effectively study mouse models of neurodegenerative disorders that develop over long periods of time, such as Parkinson’s disease and Alzhei-
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Micro LEDs can turn on or off individual neurons with different colors or wavelengths of light.
Credit: KAIST
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Developing biomedical devices takes time. The team spent over two years testing more than 20 design iterations, finally arriving at a device that weighs only two grams, does not impede animal behaviour, and works reliably. “Engineering a reliable plug-n-play interface on such a small scale was a major challenge as there were multiple electrical, mechanical, thermal and material processes that had to be optimized,” explains Raza Qazi, a biomedical engineer in Jeong’s team.
MEDICINE
Credit: Pracha Jaruprateepkul | 123rf
BEYOND TESTING, BEYOND NEUROSCIENCE
Currently, optogenetics is primarily a research tool used to study brain circuitry in animals. However, Jeong is optimistic that this will not always be the case. “A version of optogenetics will eventually and hopefully be acceptable in clinical therapy,” Jeong says. “The primary challenge will be to find a way to safely modify cellular genetics in a way that can pass FDA approval for use in humans.” Jeong envisions implantable soft medical devices that deliver targeted stimulation and/or inhibition for a variety of purposes. “You can stimulate heart cells for pacemaking, hormonal cells to manipulate adrenaline or insulin blood levels, and perhaps regulate toxic brain cells contributing to degenerative diseases,” he says. In the near future, Jeong and his team will focus on improving their device for more advanced use. They have plans to develop a fully implantable model that can be used to deliver drugs to any part of the body over a long period of time, making it more acceptable for use in clinical settings. However, as with the current device, trial and error is the daily mantra. “A fully implantable version for use in the brain with optogenetics is still a long way away,” cautions Jeong, “but with advances in batteries, systems-on-chips, biocompatible packaging, and nanotechnology, it is certainly possible.” Credit: KAIST
Courtesy of Yamagata University, Faculty of Medicine
GIANTS IN HISTORY
THE IMMUNOLOGISTS WHO STUDIED ALLERGIC REACTIONS
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Husband and wife team, Kimishige (3 December 1925 – 6 July 2018) and Teruko Ishizaka (28 September 1926 – 4 June 2019) discovered the antibody class Immunoglobulin E (IgE) that triggers allergic reactions. They also discovered that IgE antibodies attach to white blood cells, known as mast cells, releasing histamine, which causes allergic reactions. A pioneer of her time, Teruko earned a MD and PhD in medical science from the Tokyo’s Women’s Medical University and from the University of Tokyo respectively. Teruko was the head of the Division of Allergy at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology, while Kimishige was the first scientific director of the institute. The Ishizakas supported young scientists and encouraged a collaborative spirit among the researchers at the institute. On retirement, the couple moved to Teruko’s hometown, Yamagata, Japan, where Kimishige was a specially invited professor at Yamagata University. Throughout their careers, the duo co-authored over 100 papers and reviews on allergy-related topics and won several awards.
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PROTEIN LINKS CHILDHOOD STRESS TO IRRITABLE BOWEL SYNDROME Blocking a central nervous system protein could treat irritable bowel syndrome.
They also demonstrate that early life adversity, such as a lack of parental care or abuse, may have serious lifelong health consequences.
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Regular levels of stem cells (green) in the proximal colon (blue) in a control mouse (left), compared with elevated levels observed in mice mimicking irritable bowel syndrome (middle). Levels returned to normal following an antibody blocking nerve growth factor (right).
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Further information
Stressful childhood events trigger abnormal signalling from a protein called nerve growth factor, initiating a cascade of changes that ultimately lead to the development of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). The finding uncovers a link between traumatic psychological events in childhood and lifelong health repercussions, and could pave the way for new gastrointestinal disease treatments. IBS is a common functional bowel disorder characterized by stool irregularities, abdominal discomfort and bloating. While
evidence increasingly links the impact of early life adversity with the development of IBS later in life, the underlying mechanisms have remained elusive. A better understanding could reveal new ways to treat the disease, which currently has no known cure. Bian Zhaoxiang and Xavier Wong Hoileong of the School of Chinese Medicine
Professor Bian Zhaoxiang | E-mail: bzxiang@hkbu.edu.hk School of Chinese Medicine Hong Kong Baptist University
at Hong Kong Baptist University and colleagues studied a mouse model for early life stress. Mice that experienced neonatal maternal separation went on to develop lifelong IBS-like symptoms. Molecular analyses revealed that nerve growth factor (NGF), an essential protein for the development of the central nervous system, was highly elevated in the animals’ intestines. NGF was discovered to directly promote the growth and proliferation of intestinal stem cells that differentiate into serotonin-secreting enterochromaffin cells. Aberrantly high serotonin levels are known to cause IBS symptoms. An NGF-blocking antibody administered to the mice reduced stem and enterochromaffin cell numbers, and caused the IBS-like symptoms to completely disappear. The researchers then analysed clinical samples from humans and found high NGF levels in the sera of people diagnosed with diarrhoea-predominant IBS. This finding provides further support for a link between NGF and IBS. “The findings highlight the importance of NGF as a novel target for treating IBS,” Zhaoxiang says. “They also demonstrate that early life adversity, such as a lack of parental care or abuse, may have serious lifelong health consequences.” The team plans to investigate the therapeutic potential of NGF inhibitors, including those found in Chinese medicine, as a treatment for IBS. They also hope to uncover the complete chain of events that link childhood stress to the development of IBS in adulthood.
MEDICINE
Scientists have long been looking for a method to recall lost memories. Now, researchers have shown that drugs that induce histamine release in the brain can help mice and humans retrieve long-term object memories. Histamine has many important functions in the body, including roles in learning and memory. Compounds that induce its release are therefore potential candidates for treating memory disorders. Scientists from Hokkaido University, in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Tokyo and Kyoto University, looked into a group of chemicals that induce histamine release from the brain’s nerve cells by binding to their histamine H3 receptor.
up to 28 days earlier 30 minutes after the researchers gave them an injection of one of two agonists: thioperamide or betahistine. Next, human participants were asked to look at 128 images of familiar objects, like eyeglasses or a wristwatch. More than a week later, the participants were given betahistine oral capsules. After half an hour had passed, they were shown the images again, some they had seen earlier and some that were new. Participants who had taken the drugs were better at remembering which images they had seen before compared to a group that were given a placebo. The drugs were more effective for items that are more difficult to remember and in
Normally, chemical compounds in the brain bind to the histamine H3 receptor to inhibit histamine synthesis and release by nerve cells. In contrast, a class of drugs, called histamine H3 receptor inverse agonists, can bind to the receptor and produce the opposite effect. Hokkaido University pharmacologist Hiroshi Nomura and his team tested the effects of these agonists on long-term memory recall. Mice were shown two objects, one they had seen before in training and one that was new. Mice usually forget objects after three days. However, the mice were able to remember objects seen
participants with poorer memories. Further tests showed that histamine activates nerve cells in the perirhinal cortex region of the brain, which is important for processing sensory information and in a variety of memory functions. The results highlight an important interaction between histamine signalling in the central nervous system and memory recall. Clarifying the role of histamine in memory could have implications for the treatment of long-term memory loss in conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia.
HISTAMINE-INDUCING DRUGS IMPROVE LONG-TERM MEMORY RECALL
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Credit: Bruce Rolff | 123rf
Assistant Professor Hiroshi Nomura | E-mail: hnomura@pharm.hokudai.ac.jp Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences Hokkaido University
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Universiti Malaysia Sarawak haematologist Kuan Jew Win is looking for ways to detect certain blood diseases and cancers early. Her most recent research has focused on chronic myeloid leukaemia (CML), a cancer that develops in blood-forming cells in the bone marrow. Genetic changes in these cells lead to the formation of an abnormal gene, BCR-ABL1, contributing to their transformation into cancer cells. While slow growing, CML can become acute and difficult to treat. Kuan is taking a closer look at the BCR-ABL1 gene to see if it could be used as a reliable screening tool for CML before it develops. We talked with Kuan about her research and what motivates her.
cialty because I was inspired by the amazing and endless passion of three haematologists towards their patients: Dr Visalachy Purushothaman (19472019), Dato Dr Chang Kian Meng and Dr Jameela Sathar. They showed me the kind of doctor I want to be. Q. What led you to study CML? A. CML is the perfect disease to start with. CML has been the leading cancer model in oncology. It was the first cancer whose prognosis changed from doom to near-normal life span, simply with oral medication. It was also the first human cancer to have a clearly identified altered chromosome, called the Philadelphia chromosome, named after the city it was first discovered in back in 1960. Subsequent research on the Philadelphia chromosome led to the discovery of the altered gene, BCR-
Q. What do you find most challenging about this research? A. The most challenging part about this research is how to approach communities. Previous studies had reported that 2% to 57.5% of healthy adults carry the BCR-ABL1 gene. However, the studies did not use community- or population-based methods, so were not appropriate for determining BCR-ABL1 ’s suitability as a screening genetic marker for CML. To conduct a community and population-based study, we need to go to houses selected by proper population survey methods. We have to knock on the door, explain ourselves and get consent for an interview and to take blood samples. This is really challenging for me. I am a clinician and patients come and talk to me everyday because they want to talk to me. Now, it is the other way around. Luckily, my teammate, Dr. Anselm Su Ting, is
CATCHING CANCER EARLY
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Q. How did you become interested in studying medicine, and haematology in particular? A. I had a skin infection on my right lower leg when I was very young. My neighbour offered a topical powder for the infection but it got worse: there was pus, it looked ugly, and my whole leg became swollen. It was the first time for my young heart to feel that life can just fade away. A very nice doctor, Dr Lu Qi Song, treated me and I recovered. The honourable work of the doctor led me to study medicine. I chose haematology as my subspe-
ABL1, the genetic marker of CML. Besides clinical and bone marrow features, a doctor must demonstrate the presence of the Philadelphia chromosome and/or BCR-ABL1 in order to provide a CML diagnosis. The level of BCRABL1 can be easily measured with a blood sample, and the result is standardized all over the world in a unit called International Scale (IS). Other cancers might have measurable markers, but none are as easy or as standardized as CML. Doctors use the IS measurement to determine the magnitude of the disease in CML patients and their response to oral medication.
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Dr Kuan Jew Win | E-mail: wkjew@unimas.my Department of Medicine Universiti Malaysia Sarawak
a public health specialist and helped a lot in planning our community approach for blood sampling. Another part that is equally challenging for me is the laboratory work, because I am a clinician. The most unforgettable moment was when the -70°C freezer where I stored the extracted ribonucleic acid (RNA) broke and staff transferred the samples to a -30°C freezer. A temperature of -70°C is required to store durable RNA. -30°C is not good enough. My heart stopped and my mind was stunned. Luckily, we caught it in time and were able to store the RNA in a colleague’s freezer.
M MEEDDI ICCI INNEE
GIANTS IN HISTORY
THE WHEAT GENETICIST WHO RECOGNIZED THE GENOME'S FUNCTION Hitoshi Kihara (1893-1986) was one of the most famous Japanese geneticists of the 20th century. His contributions include identifying sex chromosomes (X and Y) in flowering plants, developing genome analysis methods, identifying the ancestors of cultivated wheat, and breeding the seedless watermelon. After graduating from Hokkaido Imperial University, Kihara spent much of his life researching wheat genetics at Kyoto University, the National Institute of Genetics and the Kihara Institute for Biological Research. He investigated what happened when he crossed wheat varieties that had more than two copies of each chromosome in their cells. He found their progeny were only viable if the chromosome sets were multiples of seven, and were only fully fertile if they were multiples of 14. These findings influenced his concept of the genome as a functional unit with an essential minimum set of genes. In 1946, Kihara wrote: "The history of the earth is recorded in the layers of its crust; the history of all organisms is inscribed in the chromosomes." The Kihara Prize, named in his honour, is awarded by the Genetics Society of Japan to researchers for major contributions to the field. Besides being an energetic scientist, Kihara was an accomplished athlete. He was one of the first skiers in Japan, and led the Japanese Olympic ski team in 1960 and 1964.
Q. What are you most excited about right now? A. Using our community approach to blood sampling, my collaborators at Kumamoto University and I believe we have evidence that the genetic marker for CML can be used as an early screening tool for the disease, even before a patient begins to show symptoms and the genetic changes associated with the diseases begin to occur. It is important to try to detect CML at its earliest stage for the 4% to 18% of cases that will progress to acute levels in order to reduce cancer-related deaths. This is especially important given how slowly this cancer grows; it can go undetected for a long time.
Credit: Peter Lamb | 123rf
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Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Q. What are your next steps for this work? A. We plan to expand our initial study published in the International Journal of Hematology, which included 190 blood samples, to a larger population and do longer follow up to determine if the gene can indeed be used as a reliable indicator of developing CML. It appears that the normal population does not usually carry this gene. We plan to further investigate if those who do have it are likely to develop CML.
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GENE EXPRESSION PATTERN PINPOINTS HIGH-RISK COLORECTAL CANCER Testing for a gene expression pattern could reduce the number of colorectal cancer patients referred for unnecessary radical surgery.
A new technique could dramatically reduce the number of colorectal cancer patients who unnecessarily undergo major surgery to remove tumours, instead of a minimally invasive procedure. Biomedical scientist Xin Wang of City University of Hong Kong and colleagues have used machine learning to identify a gene expression pattern, or signature, associated with colorectal cancer spreading, or metastasizing, to the lymph nodes. The signature can be used to more accurately predict the risk of cancer spreading and the appropriate surgical approach for tumour removal. Colorectal cancer is one of the leading causes of cancer-related deaths worldwide. Localized tumours that are at low risk for developing lymph node metastases can be removed by a minimally invasive endoscopic procedure.
However, current methods tend to grossly overestimate the risk of developing metastases. More patients than necessary are referred for major surgery. Wang and colleagues in the USA and Japan used machine learning and statistical tools to sift through the gene expression patterns of colorectal cancer patients with and without lymph node metastases. They were eventually able to pinpoint the expression pattern of a panel of eight genes that can robustly identify patients at high risk of having lymph node metastases. The researchers analysed tissues of 136 colorectal cancer patients following major surgery to remove small ‘T1’ tumours, which are only in the inner layer of the bowel. Only 19 (14%) of these patients actually had lymph node metastases, while 117 (86%) did not.
Credit (composite): Daniil Peshkov | Christoph Burgstedt | 123rf
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The team then compared the gene signature approach to conventional clinical analysis to assess the risk of lymph node metastasis. Their gene signature approach identified only 23% as being high risk, far less than the 84% identified by conventional analysis. The new approach, says Wang, could reduce unnecessary treatment for early stage colorectal patients by nearly 60%. He and his team are planning further studies to evaluate and validate the performance of their method as a step towards translating it into clinical practice. “We hope one day we can develop more precise diagnostic tools for colorectal cancer patients so that they would not have to suffer unnecessary surgeries,” Wang says.
Further information
Associate Professor Xin Wang | E-mail: xin.wang@cityu.edu.hk Department of Biomedical Sciences City University of Hong Kong
MEDICINE
Researchers at Qatar University, in collaboration with Imperial College London, Biostage, Inc. in the U.S., and the American University of Beirut, Lebanon, have made progress developing living heart valves that can grow with the body and integrate with the patient’s native tissue. The team generated the heart valves using a combination of nanotechnology, 3D printing and tissue engineering, which involves recently developed techniques to grow living cells into functional tissues or organs. Tissue engineering has already been used to successfully develop human skin and bladders. “Biologically engineered organs and tissues are in high demand, especially due to
to undergo several valve replacement operations during their lifetime. “Bioengineered tissue valves will last longer, be adopted by the body without rejection, and grow with the patient’s growth,” says Hasan. To bioengineer heart valves, the team first made a 3D scaffold shaped like a heart valve, using a special nanofibre-based biomaterial that is strong, flexible and biodegradable. Then they injected the scaffold with living cardiac stem cells and cultured it in a tissue incubator. The cells grew and multiplied over a period of 15 days, gradually and partially replacing the scaffold, which slowly degraded. This process is expected to con-
Did you know?
About 25,000 deaths in the U.S. and 3% of sudden deaths in the European Union occur annually because of cardiac valve defects. These numbers are expected to triple in the next 50 years due to an aging population.
BIOENGINEERING LIVING HEART VALVES Using tissue engineering techniques, researchers are developing living heart valves that can grow after implantation in the human heart.
an enormous shortage of organ donors,” says Anwarul Hasan, an engineer and principal investigator at Qatar University. The need for heart valves is particularly high: heart valve diseases are one of the most common reasons for cardiac failure. Every year, more than 90,000 people require heart valve replacements in the U.S. alone. Biologically engineered heart valves overcome some of the problems associated with mechanical and bioprosthetic valves, the two main options currently available for heart valve replacements. Mechanical valves, which are often made from metal, require patients to take blood thinning agents for the rest of their lives, while bioprosthetics, made from animal tissue, have a limited life span and must be replaced after 10 to 20 years. Both types of valve are unable to grow with time, meaning young patients may have
tinue inside the body after implantation, until the valve is fully integrated with the patient’s native tissue. The researchers developed a novel method for simulating a cardiac system, which allowed them to test how the engineered valves affected blood flow. The results showed that the tissue engineered heart valves mimicked the functions of natural heart valves, opening and closing effectively at speeds and pressures similar to commercially available heart valves. The tissue engineered heart valves have only been tested in the lab so far. The team next plans to test the valves in living animals under various conditions to assess if they can be safely investigated for humans. For example, longer-term experiments are needed to fully understand the degradation and cell growth process inside the body.
Credit: KrishnaKumar Sivaraman | 123rf
Assistant Professor Anwarul Hasan | E-mail: ahasan@qu.edu.qa Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Qatar University
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AQAMAN TAKES AIM AT RARE NEURODEGENERATIVE DISEASES A small molecule could hold the key to tackling the protein build-up in nerve cells that occurs in several devastating neurological disorders.
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defects that are known to produce the toxic proteins. However, their analysis found that AQAMAN actually causes the proteins to disperse and be removed as part of the cell’s normal ‘autophagy’ process, in which cells consume damaged parts or waste products. The AQAMAN molecule binds to soluble forms of the toxic proteins, but further studies are needed to understand the dispersal mechanisms in more detail. The findings, which were featured on the cover of the Journal of Biological Chemistry, could inform development of new drugs for treating polyQ diseases. The team next plans to test the effectiveness of AQAMAN in animal models. Drug delivery strategies would also need to be developed before it could be considered for human treatments.
Did you know?
About 7,000 rare diseases in all have been identified worldwide. According to a recent study, one in 67 Hong Kong residents has a rare disease, with more than 18% of those suffering a neurological disorder. Credit: CUHK
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clumps that lead to cell death. AQAMAN, which stands for AntipolyQ Aggregation for Machado-JosephAssociated Neurodegeneration, is a molecule synthesized by collaborator Steven Zimmerman at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and colleagues. It was originally designed to treat muscular dystrophies. While testing AQAMAN in vitro and in fruit flies, Chan’s group, including CUHK colleague Jacky Ngo, discovered the compound suppressed toxic polyQ protein accumulation in neurons. “We were surprised to find that AQAMAN interferes with toxic protein aggregation in nerve cells and hope it can lead to novel therapies that bring relief to people with polyQ disorders,” says Chan. The team had anticipated that AQAMAN would target RNA molecules with
Left: Protein clumps (green) characteristic of polyQ diseases form in nerve cell nuclei (blue). Right: After adding AQAMAN, the clumps become soluble, making it possible for the cell to degrade the protein. Further information
Professor Ho Yin Edwin Chan | E-mail: hyechan@cuhk.edu.hk School of Life Sciences The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Credit: andreyoleynik | 123rf
A synthetic small molecule compound called AQAMAN can prevent and even reverse harmful protein build-up in neurons that is associated with several rare neurodegenerative disorders, including polyglutamine (or polyQ) diseases. People with polyQ diseases, such as Huntington’s and Machado-Joseph diseases, lose muscle control and coordination as nerve cells slowly die in their brains. They experience increasing difficulty with balance and gait, as well as with speech and swallowing. These inherited diseases are caused by genetic mutations and are incurable; drug therapies are urgently needed. Edwin Chan, a biochemist at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), has studied polyQ diseases for the past two decades. He has focused on how proteins in neurons fold the wrong way, and how these misfolded proteins form toxic
MEDICINE
FINDING THE GENES THAT TURN ON JAPANESE ENCEPHALITIS A hyperactive gene response to Japanese encephalitis virus infection ultimately leads to brain inflammation.
Credit: Suphatphong Koetnamsai | 123rf
Did you know?
The mosquito is the deadliest animal in the world. Mosquito-transmitted diseases account for approximately 830,000 deaths annually, far more than the second deadliest animal: humans.
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ologist at the Universiti Malaysia Sarawak. Using microarray technology, Perera, University of Malaya pathologist Wong Kum Thong, and their colleagues investigated gene expression in early and late stage JEV-infected human neuronal tumour cells. Infected neurons showed significant changes in gene expression. Genes involved in antimicrobial responses, and cell signalling, function, maintenance, survival, and death were overexpressed in infected cells. The genes with the largest increase in expression turn on specialized pathogen-recognizing cell receptors. These receptors initiate the activation and attraction of immune T cells. The genes also code for signalling proteins that regulate the T cell migration into infected neurons. A problem is that so many T cells and other protective immune cells can migrate into the neurons that severe brain inflammation ensues. The team’s findings could contribute to improvements in the management of the disease, which currently has no treatment. “We are hopeful that the understanding of the immune responses of infected neurons will open the door to more effective treatments,” says Perera.
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Investigators have identified the specific genes that become overactive as a result of nerve cell infection with Japanese encephalitis virus. The genes activate cell receptors and signalling proteins that attract immune cells to the brain. The finding suggests that nerve cells may play a significant immune role against the virus, but may also be involved in exacerbating the brain inflammation that is characteristic of the infection. Japanese encephalitis virus (JEV) is transmitted by the Culex species of mosquitoes throughout Asia and the Western Pacific, most often in rice farming regions. Most people infected show no or mild symptoms, but a small percentage develop dangerous brain inflammation, called encephalitis. About one in four cases are fatal, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Cells normally respond to viral invasion by activating genes to get rid of the infection. However, little is known about the genes that are activated when neurons are infected with JEV. “Understanding the neuronal responses to JEV infection will shed light on the interactions between the host cells and the virus,” says David Perera, a molecular bi-
Credit: Kateryna Kon | 123rf
Professor David Perera | E-mail: dperera@unimas.my Institute of Health and Community Medicine Universiti Malaysia Sarawak
Further information
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MEDICINE A new multipronged strategy rejuvenates scarred heart muscle and damaged vascular tissue following severe heart attacks, healing damage usually considered irreversible and requiring a heart transplant. Heart attacks occur when the heart’s blood supply is suddenly cut off, leading to permanent and irreversible damage to heart tissue, called a myocardial infarction. Heart transplants are sometimes the only treatment option available for people with severe myocardial infarction and advanced heart failure. But heart transplants are very risky, costly and subject to limited, suitable donors. Stem cell-based therapies have recently emerged as a promising therapeutic alternative. “Since both cardiac muscles and blood vessels are severely damaged following myocardial infarction, therapeutic strate-
gies should focus on the comprehensive repair of both at the same time. But so far strategies have only focused on one or the other,” says stem cell biologist Kiwon Ban at City University of Hong Kong. Ban collaborated with researchers in South Korea to develop a therapeutic approach using two major types of stem cells: human bone-marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) and cardiac muscle cells, or ‘cardiomyocytes’, derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSC-CMs). hMSCs secrete proteins that promote blood vessel regeneration. hiPSC-CMs express cardiac-specific genes, structural proteins, ion channels and, more importantly, can spontaneously contract. hiPSC-CMs were injected directly into the heart wall of rats with myocardial infarction, while a patch loaded with
hMSCs was placed on top of the infarct area like a bandage. The approach led to significant improvement in cardiac function and enhanced blood vessel formation. The hMSC patch provided a micro-environment that enhanced vascular regeneration and also improved the retention of hiPSC-CMs, ultimately augmenting heart function and restoring the injured heart muscle. “We believe this novel dual approach can potentially provide translational and clinical benefits to the field of cardiac regeneration,” says Ban. “Based on the same principle, the protocol may also be utilized for repairing other organs with historically low regeneration potential, including the brain and pancreas.” The team is now working on follow-up studies in larger animal models.
DUAL STEM CELL THERAPY FOR REPAIRING FAILED HEARTS A new approach uses two types of stem cells to repair both heart muscle and blood vessels damaged during severe heart attacks.
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Further information
Assistant Professor Kiwon Ban | E-mail: ban.kw@cityu.edu.hk Department of Biomedical Sciences City University of Hong Kong
Credit: Dr Ban Kiwon
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Immunostaining shows cardiac muscle cells derived from induced pluripotent stem cells in green; Troponin T, a protein found in heart muscle cells, in red; and cell nuclei in blue.
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