News

For Gunnar Wilken, a researcher in OIST’s Structural Cellular Biology Unit, the winding path to publication involved four continents, the help of a legendary mathematician, and a very difficult proof.

Research by Assistant Professor Keshav Dani, who leads the OIST Femtosecond Spectroscopy Unit, aims to understand the physics of what happens to electrons in materials at the femtosecond timescale, a millionth of a billionth of a second.

From March 5-7, a group of genomics researchers and evolutionary biologists met at OIST in pursuit of an ambitious goal: to develop a new theory of evolution.

On February 25, Ms. Caroline Starzynski, a short-term student research assistant from Germany in the G0 Cell Unit, and a student in the OIST intermediate Japanese class, took part in the 29th Japanese Speech Contest for Foreigners in Naha City.

Pinaki Chakraborty, a Physicist from India explains why studying the motion of fluids, for example the turbulent churning and whirling movements of typhoons, can assist us in better understanding and coping with such adverse weather conditions.

The OIST Marine Genomics Unit, in collaboration with Japanese research groups including from the University of Tokyo and Mikimoto Co., Ltd., has completed the first decoding of the genome of the Japanese pearl oyster.

What do global warming, marine rescue operations, and coral habitat have in common? Researchers who gathered at OIST on January 31, 2012 to attend the second liaison meeting of the Marine Research in Okinawa had the answer.

A central, controversial, and long-standing question in neuroscience is how neurons encode the information they are sending along: is it the rate of spike firing that carries the message, or is the timing of the output spikes from a neuron relative to the input to that neuron more important?

OIST researchers have discovered that in a nonhuman primate model of Tourette syndrome, high-frequency electrical stimulation in the basal ganglia abolishes abnormal neural firing responsible for involuntary movements.

OIST’s Dr. Fadel Samatey, collaborated with researchers from the University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMASS) to bring a molecular playground to OIST.

Cells multiply by growing and dividing into two, following a regular pattern called the cell cycle.

On December 19th, Dr. Marylka Yoe Uusisaari, a researcher in the Optical Neuroimaging Unit of OIST, visited Nakadomari Jr. High School in Onna Village to give a talk titled “How do you make a scientist.”