Skip to content

Hokkaido University

Hokkaido University is a major national research university in Sapporo, Japan, with programs spanning natural sciences, agriculture, and engineering.

Known aliases

  • Hokkaido Univ.

Current stories

scienceOne report1 publisher

Four fossil beaks place Cretaceous squid 10,000 kilometres from every other known find

Squid fossils from the Western Interior Seaway push the group's known Cretaceous range to the other side of the globe, about a million years before the asteroid impact that has long been credited with spreading them.

Publishers:eos.org

Reality

Evidence60
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+15
Incentives25
Confidence55
scienceOne report1 publisher

Bowing raised attractiveness ratings only for Japanese raters in a six-country experiment

Kawahara and Osugi built 3D models that stood upright or bowed and showed them to raters in six countries. The increase in rated attractiveness appeared among the Japanese participants and barely moved elsewhere.

Publishers:phys.org

Reality

Evidence52
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+15
Incentives30
Confidence45
scienceOne report1 publisher

Thirteen summers of pole readings put Qaanaaq Ice Cap's loss at eight metres of water

A Hokkaido University team drilled aluminum poles into northwestern Greenland's ice every summer from 2012 to 2025, and the record they built traces about half of the growing loss low on the glacier to the ice itself slowing down.

Publishers:phys.org

Reality

Evidence74
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap−10
Incentives40
Confidence66
scienceOne report1 publisher

Hokkaido team raises Mercury's measured contraction to 11.6 km after correcting for rough terrain

Shortening structures turn up more often on smooth ground than on rough. Correcting for that detection bias raises Mercury's radial contraction from 8.3 to 11.6 kilometres, and the authors say even that is probably low.

Publishers:phys.org

Reality

Evidence62
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+18
Incentives40
Confidence57
scienceOne report1 publisher

Rotating the light's polarization switches one MoOCl2 nanodisk between plasmonic and dielectric modes

MoOCl2 is metallic along one crystal axis and dielectric along the perpendicular one, and an Okayama-led team used that split to measure a dielectric quality factor of 45.3 in nanodisks on gold, about 5.7 times the plasmonic mode's.

Publishers:phys.org

Reality

Evidence62
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+15
Incentives58
Confidence55
scienceOne report1 publisher

DNA polymerase writes, kinesin motors weave: a two-stage line for dissipative assembly

An Institute of Science Tokyo team chained an enzyme to molecular motors to build DNA networks on a surface. Pull the ATP and nothing assembles, but the energy bill is still unwritten.

Publishers:phys.org

Reality

Evidence52
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+18
Incentives68
Confidence45