This compelling book sheds light on one of the most defining yet often overlooked forces in Japanese society: dōchō atusryoku (conformity pressure). Far beyond a matter of individual psychology, this book argues that conformity acts as an important force in shaping politics, governance, and the legal system in Japan. It is a force that binds people together, enforces unspoken rules, and even fills the gaps where laws or clear leadership are absent. At the heart of this analysis is the concept of “sekken”—the collective social ...

The water we use every day is purified in wastewater treatment plants and discharged into rivers, and in recent years, the reuse of treated water for domestic and industrial use has been expanding to solve the water shortage problem. The purification process removes various harmful substances, including phosphorus, which causes green algae, and disinfects microorganisms such as total coliform. Phosphorus is an essential component of domestic and industrial waste, including fertilizers, detergents, and animal manure, but when it remains in the water, it causes algae blooms in rivers and lakes. A research team led by Dr. Jae-Woo Choi and Dr. Kyungjin Cho of the Center ...

New research finds that self-employed women have fewer risk factors for cardiovascular disease (CVD) compared to non-self-employed women, suggesting that the work environment may play a role in the development of risk factors that can lead to heart attacks. While the findings also showed some positive associations between health outcomes and self-employment among white men, the researchers found women had the most favorable CVD risk profile associated with being self-employed, possibly because they are more likely than men to experience stress and time demands related to balancing responsibilities across work and home.   Self-employed men ...

   Journals from BMJ Group Press Release: Embargoed 23:30 hours UK (BST) time Thursday 29 May 2025 Please click on links for full articles and contact authors direct for further comment - details can be found under Notes for Editors. Please remember to credit the relevant journal - this assures your audience it is from a reputable source. Headlines: US general military service may lower, rather than heighten, depression risk Around 1 in 7 US adults who smoke may have some degree of disability BMJ MILITARY HEALTH Externally ...

A new study has found that depression is linked to an increased risk of dementia in both mid and later life.   The new research, which is published in eClinicalMedicine, was led by Jacob Brain and Maha Alshahrani from the Institute of Mental Health and School of Medicine at the University of Nottingham, University of Adelaide and the Dementia Centre of Excellence at Curtin University in Australia.   Mr Brain said: "Our study shows that depression is linked to an increased risk of dementia in both midlife ...

A new study published in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health journal suggests that parental or caregiver intuition may outperform some traditional early warning systems in identifying children at risk of deterioration. The new analysis found that caregiver concern for worsening condition of paediatric patients was strongly associated with critical illness in pediatric patients admitted to the hospital, even after accounting for abnormal vital signs (abnormal heart rate or abnormal respiratory rate). In high-income countries critical illness in children is rare, and often ...

Around 1 in 7 of US adults who currently smoke may have some degree of disability, suggests the first study of its kind published online in the journal Tobacco Control. And the prevalence of disability and/or some degree of functional difficulty is twice as high among those who continue to puff away as it is among those who have never smoked, the data analysis indicates. All in all, the figures suggest that 40% of the estimated 25 million adults who currently smoke experience some level of functional difficulty, ...

In 2024, Brazil celebrated the 20th anniversary of the Bolsa Família Programme (BFP), one of the world’s largest conditional cash transfer initiatives. A new study published in The Lancet Public Health shows that the BFP has prevented more than 8.2 million hospitalisations and 713,083 deaths in Brazil between 2004 and 2019. In addition, it is estimated that an additional 683,721 deaths could be prevented if the programme's coverage is expanded by 2030. These programmes provide cash transfers to low-income families, often with school-age children, provided they meet certain conditions, such as ensuring school attendance and up-to-date vaccinations. ...

Open water swimming can be strangely claustrophobic. Immerse your face in cloudy water and your view might dwindle to a few centimetres. Yet, harbour seals (Phoca vitulina) manage to negotiate the turbid coastal waters in which they reside with ease, detecting their surroundings through various senses, including their dextrous whiskers. But Frederike Hanke from University of Rostock, Germany, wondered whether the resourceful creatures may also to use their vision to determine which direction they are manoeuvring in, despite the opaque view. ‘We wanted to know whether harbour seals can determine their heading from ...

VIDEO AVAILABLE HERE MIAMI, FLORIDA (MAY 29, 2025) – A new four-drug combination is highly effective and safe in patients with newly diagnosed multiple myeloma, according to data presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, held May 30 through June 3 in Chicago. The data emerged from the ADVANCE clinical trial led by Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, part of the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.    The randomized, multi-center trial tests the effects of adding the targeted drug daratumumab to the standard three-part therapy regimen, called KRd (carfilzomib, lenalidomide and dexamethasone). “This ...

VIDEO AVAILABLE HERE MIAMI, FLORIDA (May 29, 2025) – A new study led by experts at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, part of the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, is the first to look at trends over time in alcohol-linked cancer mortality across the United States. The findings, titled “Escalating Impact of Alcohol-Related Cancer Mortality in the U.S.: A call for action,” will be presented May 31 at ASCO 2025, the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Chicago. Earlier this year, the former U.S. ...

As climate change fuels more frequent and severe heat waves, governments worldwide have adopted Heat-Health Action Plans (HHAPs) to prevent illness and death from heat stroke, heart attacks, and other unwanted physical and mental health outcomes. Yet a new study by researchers at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health reveals a critical gap in these plans: while most acknowledge mental health risks, such as heightened anxiety, depression, and suicide, few propose concrete interventions to protect vulnerable populations. According to one estimate, exposure to heatwaves globally has doubled ...

In an important contribution from the social sciences, Rice University anthropologists Cymene Howe and Dominic Boyer examine the societal consequences of global glacier loss in a commentary published today in Science. Their article appears alongside new research that estimates that more than three-quarters of the world’s glacier mass could disappear by the end of the century under current climate policies. While the study projects the physical outcomes of glacial melt, Howe and Boyer highlight the social impacts and human ...

Today, University of Phoenix Career Institute® and Motherly released the latest installment in The Career Optimism Special Report™ Series: Moms in the Sandwich Generation, revealing that 51% of sandwich generation moms have left a job due to caregiving responsibilities. This alarming statistic underscores the career-limiting pressure that anyone faces when caring for both children and aging loved ones—as men are also increasingly finding themselves in this role. What’s more, challenges dual-caregivers face are ...

Hoboken, N.J., May 29, 2025 — During the final week of summer in 2021, Hurricane Ida emerged from the Gulf of Mexico, turned almost directly northeast and swept through the South en route to Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. Fueled by unusually heavy rains, falling on ground still saturated by two other recent large storms, Ida would eventually carve a path of destruction through the region. Some New Jersey cities and towns received as many as nine inches of rain within a 24-hour period, ...

Young patients with cancer need support when it comes to scholastic performance, which can be an empowering and motivating force during the challenges of cancer treatment, UF Health Cancer Center researchers have found. The study, presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) 2025 Annual Meeting, identified four areas of support that need to be integrated into adolescent and young adult (AYA) cancer care: help with obtaining school accommodations, support with losing extracurricular activities that play a role in identity formation, navigating a disruption in their academic trajectory ...

A study led by University of Cincinnati Cancer Center researchers sheds new light on the mechanisms by which a major oncogene promotes and sustains lymphoma development and progression, paving the way for novel targeted therapies. The research, led by first author Austin C. MacMillan and senior author Tom Cunningham, was published May 29 in the journal Redox Biology. Study background The Cunningham lab focuses on an oncogene called MYC that “turbocharges” the metabolism of cancer cells to fuel their aggressive growth and proliferation. Although many of the numerous individual pathways ...

A new avenue for targeted drug delivery has been proposed by researchers from The Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Their findings, published in Materials Today Bio, report the first successful application of metabolic labeling in platelets. Platelets are anucleate cell fragments that congregate at sites of bleeding and inflammation to clot blood. Their unique properties make them attractive vehicles for targeted drug delivery systems. However, platelets are notoriously difficult ...

As climate change intensifies extreme weather, two new NYU studies show 3D flood visualizations developed by a cross-institutional research team dramatically outperform traditional maps for communicating risk. When Sunset Park, Brooklyn residents compared both formats that visualized flooding, 92% preferred the dynamic 3D approach. "The challenge we face is that substantial sectors of the population ignore flood warnings and fail to evacuate," said Professor Debra F. Laefer, the NYU Tandon School of Engineering senior researcher involved in both studies who holds appointments in the Civil and Urban Engineering Department and in the Center ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. — Mayo Clinic’s Business Development team, consistently recognized as one of the top commercialization operations among academic medical centers, is expanding its capabilities through a new initiative: the Mayo Venture Partner (MVP) program. In response to the dynamic and evolving healthcare landscape, Mayo Clinic is enlisting industry veterans to create groundbreaking technologies, co-invest in aligned companies and build new ventures from the ground up. The ...

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Large-scale solar power arrays occupy about 0.2 percent of agricultural land in Arkansas, according to an analysis by the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture. Solar energy production is increasingly being used to meet both energy needs and zero net emissions goals within the United States. Arkansas is following this trend with several utility-scale solar energy production systems built in 2023 and 2024, and more scheduled to come online in the following years. This has raised some concerns over the displacement of agricultural ...

  Analysis of ancient proteins preserved in fossilized tooth enamel reveals insights into the elusive nature of Paranthropus robustus, researchers report. The findings, which challenge long-held assumptions about this early human relative, suggest greater diversity within Paranthropus than previously recognized and support the possibility of multiple distinct species within the genus. While advances in ancient DNA (aDNA) sequencing have enabled valuable insights into the evolutionary relationships of Middle to Late Pleistocene hominins, understanding of earlier Pliocene-Pleistocene species, like Paranthropus, remains limited. This is largely because ...

In a Perspective, Mark Hanson and Peter Gluckman explore how maternal stress, caregiving quality, and early environmental conditions can shape the development of executive functions and emotional regulation in children, and how these factors contribute to the emergence of anxiety disorders in young people. Mounting evidence reveals a significant rise in anxiety disorders among adolescents ages 12 to 19, especially in developing countries like the United States, which cannot be fully explained by contemporary stressful events like the COVID-19 pandemic. This pattern suggests that broader longer-term societal or developmental factors ...

A research study led by Oxford University has developed a powerful new technique for finding the next generation of materials needed for large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computing. This could end a decades-long search for inexpensive materials that can host unique quantum particles, ultimately facilitating mass production of quantum computers. The results have been published today (29 May) in the journal Science. Quantum computers could unlock unprecedented computational power far beyond current supercomputers. However, the performance of quantum computers is currently limited, due to interactions with the environment degrading the quantum ...

Quantum electrodynamics – a competition area for precision Quantum electrodynamics (QED) is the fundamental theory describing all electromagnetic phenomena including light (photons). At the same time, it is the most precisely tested theory in physics at all. It has been stringently tested in various ways up to 0.1 parts per billion. But it is just the very strength of this theory that drives physicists to test it even more rigorously and to explore its possible limits. Any significant deviation would be a hint for new physics. QED understands the electromagnetic interaction among charged particles as the exchange of “virtual” photons – ...