news highlight

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  Common painkiller revives fading muscle protein in aging mice SEOUL, September 10 (AJP) - The arthritis painkiller meloxicam slowed muscle wasting in old mice by restoring a protein that muscles lose with age, researchers at two South Korean universities have found. Sarcopenia, the gradual loss of muscle mass and strength that comes with age, contributes to frailty, lost mobility, metabolic problems and higher death rates in older adults, the researchers wrote. The processes that drive it are still not fully understood, they added, which has September 10, 2026
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  Naver takes AI into France's national broadcast archive SEOUL, September 08 (AJP) - An agreement signed at an international film summit in southern France on Monday (local time) will put South Korean artificial intelligence to work inside France's national broadcast archive. Naver signed a strategic memorandum of understanding with the Institut national de l'audiovisuel, France's national broadcast archive, at the Lumière Summit in Saint-Paul-de-Vence. The two sides will carry out joint research on AI-based preservat September 8, 2026
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  Sookmyung professor wins 5-year grant for kidney disease study SEOUL, September 08 (AJP) - A government program created this year to keep South Korea's most decorated scientists in the laboratory after they reach retirement age will pay for five years of kidney disease research at Sookmyung Women's University. The Ministry of Science and ICT announced the program on April 2 and picked 20 researchers nationwide with the National Research Foundation of Korea. Universities and state-funded institutes could nominate up to three candidates September 8, 2026
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  Researchers propose treating cancer by refolding genome SEOUL, September 07 (AJP) - How the genome is folded inside a cell can drive cancer without any change to the DNA sequence itself, and a review by two South Korean researchers argues that the folding should be treated as a target for cancer drugs. The review appeared in June in Experimental & Molecular Medicine, a journal published by the Korean Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. Its authors, Jang Sun-young and Yoo Kyung-hyun, work in the Laboratory of Biomedical September 7, 2026
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  Battery scans read bumps as ion movement: KAIST SEOUL, September 07 (AJP) - Some of the signals that battery researchers read as ions moving inside a material are produced by nothing more than an uneven surface, a team at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology found, and the correction is as simple as polishing the sample flat. The team tested the effect on single-crystal silicon, a material in which no ions travel, after machining fine trenches into its surface, and a signal resembling ion movement appeared any September 7, 2026
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  KAIST method cuts 87 % of AI query errors and token costs SEOUL, September 04 (AJP) - When an artificial intelligence system writes a database query that will not run, the database that rejected it already knows what is wrong with it. Most systems treat that rejection as a plain failure signal and hand the whole query back to the AI to be written again from scratch. A team at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology has built software that reads the rejection as a set of directions and repairs only the broken piece. Tested September 4, 2026
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  S. Korea targets physical AI, expert warns against imitation SEOUL, September 02 (AJP) - South Korea can reach the top tier of physical artificial intelligence by pairing its factory base with the data those factories generate, Prime Minister Han Seong-sook told a technology forum in Seoul on Wednesday. Physical AI refers to systems that act in the world rather than on a screen, driving robots, machines and vehicles through real space. It is the industry's next frontier after generative AI, and the competition for it has pulled in natio September 2, 2026
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  Kookmin University grabs 10th Formula Student Korea win SEOUL, September 02 (AJP) - Two electric race cars built by undergraduates finished first and second at South Korea's biggest student car-building competition last weekend, giving Kookmin University a 10th straight overall title in the event's Formula division. About 1,800 students from 43 universities competed at Formula Student Korea 2026, which ran from Aug. 27 to 30 at the Korea Automotive Technology Institute's vehicle and driver safety research center in Yeonggwa September 2, 2026
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  KAIST LED mask quadruples skin injection gains SEOUL, September 02 (AJP) - A wearable LED mask that conforms to the face's contours has made a common dermatology injection about four times more effective at restoring skin elasticity in a clinical trial. This result points to home beauty devices as a way to carry the benefit of a clinic visit into daily use, the Korea Advanced Institute of Science said Wednesday. According to the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), the project was led by Lee Keon-ja September 2, 2026