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Primate study reveals molecular basis of red-green color vision

Human color vision depends on three types of cone cells in the retina. Although all three contain the same light-absorbing molecule, 11-cis-retinal, differences in the surrounding protein determine sensitivity to red, green, or blue light. Understanding how these subtle protein differences produce such precise color discrimination has been difficult because cone pigments are highly unstable and structurally challenging to study.

Now, researchers led by Associate Professor Kota Katayama from Nagoya Institute of Technology, Japan, have examined red and green cone pigments from the crab-eating macaque (Macaca fascicularis), whose color vision system closely resembles that of humans, and found that just three amino acid substitutions account for nearly the entire 30 nm difference in light absorption between the two pigments.

The research team included Massimo Olivucci from the University of Siena and Bowling Green State University, Hideaki Kato from The University of Tokyo, and Hideki Kandori from Nagoya Institute of Technology. This study was published in Science in Volume 392, Issue 6,805 on June 25, 2026.

Honda and Nissan to jointly develop next-generation car operating system

Honda Motor and Nissan Motor, which have been discussing areas of cooperation, are considering jointly developing an operating system for software-defined vehicles (SDVs) based on Nissan’s technology, informed sources said Sunday.

Functionality such as autonomous driving an be added or improved in SDVs through software updates. As the vehicle’s operating system (OS) is a core technology for next-generation automobiles, standardizing it between the two Japanese automakers is expected to improve development efficiency.

In 2024, Honda and Nissan announced that they would explore collaboration in areas including SDVs, batteries and vehicle supply. They later entered talks on a potential business integration. Although those merger discussions ultimately collapsed, the companies continued to examine cooperation on a project-by-project basis.

One Common Sweetener May Increase Stroke Risk by Damaging The Brain’s Protective Barrier

The blood-brain barrier surrounds the blood vessels that run through the brain, letting in oxygen and nutrients while keeping out toxins and pathogens. It’s an absolutely essential line of defense that protects the brain from damage.

Researchers now believe they have discovered a significant threat to this barrier and its stability – and from something we’re willingly putting into our bodies.

Erythritol has been used as an artificial sweetener for decades.

Vaccine therapy for pediatric highgrade glioma: current landscape, challenges, and future directions NeuroOncology

Pediatric high-grade gliomas (pHGG) are among the most aggressive childhood brain tumors, with limited treatment options and poor prognosis. Vaccine-based immunotherapy offers a promising strategy by leveraging tumor-specific or associated antigens to stimulate durable anti-tumor immune responses with minimal toxicity.

This review outlines the scientific rationale for vaccine therapies in pHGG, detailing key targets such as glioma-associated antigens (EphA2, IL-13Rα2, survivin), driver mutation–derived neoantigens (H3.3K27M, TP53, IDH1), and viral antigens (CMV pp65). We evaluate current vaccine platforms, including peptide vaccines, dendritic cell vaccines, mRNA-based vaccines, and neoantigen-personalized approaches, highlighting early-phase clinical trial results that demonstrate safety and immunogenicity. Despite encouraging preliminary data, several challenges hinder clinical translation, including the distinct immune environment in the central nervous system, intratumoral heterogeneity, low mutational burden, immunosuppressive microenvironments, steroid use, and logistical hurdles in vaccine production and trial design. Future research must address these barriers through optimized antigen selection, combinatorial therapies, novel delivery systems, and pediatric-specific immune profiling.

With continued multidisciplinary collaboration, vaccine therapies may emerge as a meaningful addition to the therapeutic arsenal for children with pHGG.

Are gas turbines ready for the hydrogen economy?

Can we fuel gas turbines with hydrogen instead of fossil fuels and cut 15% of global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions? Gas turbines generate around 22% of the world’s electricity. Replacing fossil fuels is a key step toward more sustainable power generation. Hydrogen is widely considered a promising alternative fuel for gas turbines in both power generation and aviation. However, before hydrogen can be used safely on a large scale, researchers need to better understand how it affects the materials exposed to the extreme operating conditions inside turbines.

While the interaction between hydrogen and metallic materials has been extensively studied at ambient temperatures, far less is known about its effects at the elevated temperatures found in gas turbines. An international team of researchers has now investigated how hydrogen affects nickel-based superalloys—the materials of choice for gas turbines—at elevated temperatures.

Their results indicate that hydrogen-induced embrittlement can be at least twice as severe, posing a significant challenge for components that must meet the highest standards of safety and reliability. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Sustainable Materials (MPI-SusMat) and their collaborators published the new findings in the journal Nature Materials.

Malaysia’s resource anxiety tests Asia’s fastest data center build-out

HONG KONG/JOHOR, Malaysia – After leapfrogging Singapore to become the region’s fastest-growing data center hub, Malaysia is facing intensifying scrutiny as the resources debate that has complicated the industry’s growth spreads to emerging Asia.

Protests over a data center complex in Johor state’s southern tip — the epicenter of the boom — were the first of their kind in the country. In Selangor, the richest and most populous state, debate about the burden on communities has become politicized.

“Two years ago, it was just about building capacity,” said Cheam Tat Inn, managing director at the Malaysian arm of U.S. data center operator Equinix.

World Happiness Report 2026: Complex Global Picture of Social Media and Happiness

Life evaluations among under 25s in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand have dropped dramatically (by almost one point on a 0–10 scale) over the past decade, while the average for the young in the rest of the world has increased, according to Gallup World Poll data.

One international survey1 of 15-year-olds in nearly 50 countries suggests heavy social media use is associated, on average, with a significant drop in wellbeing among the students surveyed, though any effect is highly dependent on the type of social media platform being used, how it is used, as well as demographic factors such as gender and socio-economic status.

Other factors, such as social connections and a sense of belonging, are associated with much bigger changes in how respondents feel about their lives.

The global biogeography of passerine songs

Although bird songs are classic models for understanding the evolution of vocal communication, their global diversity has long made the development of a unifying framework challenging. By analyzing the acoustic architecture of songs from more than 3,000 passerine species worldwide, we show that this acoustic space can be structured around eight elemental motifs. The differential use of these motifs is driven by a combination of species’ biological traits (social organization, morphology, and mating system) and the physics of sound propagation. In tropical rainforests, environmental filtering for transmission efficiency favors structurally simple motifs, such as flat whistles.

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