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science (Page 18)

Mindreading App (Shut Up and Take More Of My Free Will Away)?

At first glance, this tech news report seems to be telling us of an intriguing augmented reality app that’s scary good. When you point your camera at an object, it can automatically read your mind about what you’ll want to do next on the internet with respect to that object, like get a coupon for it or research about it on Wikipedia. Which would bring to mind various questions, such as, is it like auto-fill/auto-complete, remembering what you or others have done before, taken a few steps further? Is it selectively taking you to a website that’s ultimately aiming to get your money? Is it inviting you to give up your free will and just be satisfied with the website it saw fit to jump you to? How does it know what you want to do? Read More


  • Jun 14, 2012

What’s that shadow? It’s a bird, it’s a plane – no it’s the planet Venus, and it won’t be happening again for another 105 years!

We previously brought you a video capturing beautiful images of a “super moon“, but we now have some amazing photos from another astronomical event – the transit of planet Venus across the Sun. The event was observed in Japan on June 6th over a period of approximately six hours starting from 7 a.m. Japan Time. You may want to take a look at these images, because the next time Venus makes a transit across the Sun will be 105 years from now! Read More

Researchers Identify Protein Responsible for the Effects of Aging, Rather than a Fountain of Youth, We May Need a Syphon of Old

A research group headed by Professor Kazunari Komuro at Osaka University believes they have found the chemical responsible for effects of aging like deterioration of muscles.

The nasty chemical responsible for making us old and frail is called C1q. Being able to regulate it in our bodies can possibly lead to treatments and prevention of more serious health problems like heart attacks and strokes.

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Breakthrough Material Can Alternate Between a Solid and a Liquid Simply by Shining a Light

The National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST for mercifully short) has announced the development of a new material that can be used as an adhesive product.

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  • Jun 7, 2012

Worried about power shortage? Now you can carry around your own portable solar power source!

Conservation and efficient use of energy is a huge issue these days, particularly in Japan where the nuclear power plants have been shut down and people are seriously concerned about whether we will have enough electric power in the coming summer months when electricity use will be at the highest. Well, if you’re worried about running out of electric power, here’s the perfect gadget for you – your very own portable solar panel kit! Read More

Kyoto Bee Research Center Is the Bee’s Knees

Kyoto Sangyo University opened a brand-new research facility this week, the Honeybee Industry Research Center, to study the ecology of the little bumblers and the benefits of their honey. This kind of specialized facility is extremely rare and is generating a lot of buzz among entomologists. Read More

We all know that tomato juice with its frosty phlegm-like consistency can really bring down the best of days.  Even the much needed boost it received as a diet fad appears to be quickly waning due to its general crappiness.

Now, researchers on the dime of beverage companies Asahi and Kagome have discovered that it can also bust up anyone’s party by reversing the effects of alcohol.

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  • May 28, 2012

See this amazing video of a “Super Moon” – breathtaking images that look almost surreal!

Most of us at one time or another have probably looked up at the night sky and marveled at the beauty of the moon glowing a beautiful pale silver, or sometimes a golden or orangish yellow. Well, looking at the night sky is sure to be even more exciting when you can see a “super moon” in the sky! What exactly is a super moon? To put it simply, it’s when the earth and moon comes closer together in distance, and you see the moon appearing larger and brighter than usual.  We actually had a “super moon” earlier this month, and we’ve found an amazing video that was taken at the time! Read More

If a superflare, which is an explosion up to millions or even a billion times more powerful than a typical solar flare, were to happen on our sun, it would release incredible amounts of electromagnetic energy that would likely fry the world’s all-important electrical grids and send society spiraling into chaos. A large enough one could even burn up our protective ozone layer and turn all life on Earth extra-crispy.

So, what are the chances of that happening? Are we all doomed!? Well, depends on who you ask, apparently. Read More


  • Apr 21, 2012

Beautiful “transparent” biological specimens a work of art – you can actually buy them and they look amazing!

Have you heard of a series of unique creations called “Transparent Specimens” produced by Iori Tomita? It may sound bizarre, but they are specimens of different living creatures including fish, arthropods, reptiles and mammals that have been specially treated to make them transparent. And the end result is far from bizarre – in fact, the specimens are so beautiful that the series of work have a considerable following of fans.

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  • Apr 19, 2012

What the … ? U.S. Navy firefighting Robot may be life-saving but is unnervingly freaky!

Rescue and firefighting robots that can operate in disaster areas too dangerous for humans can obviously be a great asset, and it is not surprising that research and development of such machines are conducted in many countries around the world.

One such firefighting robot developed by the U.S. Navy has been the subject of  significant attention recently. It’s actually a humanoid robot, which is unusual for a rescue robot, but that isn’t the reason why it is gaining attention; the reason becomes quite obvious once you see a picture of the robot – the robot just simply looks incredibly freaky! Read More

Forget Surgical Masks and Fake Glasses, Wear Your Allergy Remedy Around Your Neck With the Virus Blocker!

Spring brings new life, new love, warmer weather and so many other great things. It also brings with it heaps of pollen, and we find ourselves smack dab in the middle of pollen season. While it’s been a pretty easy year in terms of pollen, many of us are still shut indoors and suffering. I may have stumbled upon an easy, cost-effective way to take care of that, though.
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Algae Found Capable of Removing Radioactive Matter from Water

Necessity is the mother of invention, and the damaged created by the Tohoku earthquake and subsequent Fukushima Daiichi disaster has created an urgent need for solutions to the environmental problems Japan faces.

Working with various universities across Japan, the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research, better known as RIKEN have developed a new method of decontaminating water containing radioactive materials.  It uses a type of algae that has been shown to “eat” radioactive cesium.

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Energy Companies Make Move Toward Massive Geothermal Development in Fukushima

Idemitsu Kosan, INPEX and other energy corporations began speaking with locals on April 3 about building a geothermal power plant inside Bandai-Asahi National Park in Fukushima Prefecture. If locals agree with the plan, research would begin this year with operation commencing in about 10 years. The area is expected to produce 270,000 kilowatts of geothermal energy, higher than anywhere else in Japan.

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Professor Michitaka Hirose and his team at Tokyo University have invented a pair of glasses which lower your appetite and make you feel fuller simply by making your food look bigger. Now there’s a diet plan that could work for me.
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JAXA Invents Camera That Measures Radiation

On March 29th, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and the Japan Atomic Energy Agency announced that they have developed a prototype camera which detects gamma-ray emitting radioactive material such as cesium and shows the exposure distribution over an image. They hope that it can be used to make clean-up of contaminated areas around Fukushima Daiichi more efficient by locating places where radioactive matter has accumulated.
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  • Mar 30, 2012

Since the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant following the terrible East Japan Earthquake in March last year, radiation has unfortunately been a topic of concern for everyone in Japan. It is therefore not surprising that a team of scientists at Tokyo University, where some of the top minds of Japan can be found, conducted a study on how radiation in seafood can be reduced. However, the results which have been reported in the media recently are not what you may expect from Japan’s premier academic institution.

According to reports, the team at Tokyo University, headed by Professor Shugo Watabe, concluded from their experiments that up to 95% of the radioactive cesium contained in fish can be removed by reducing the fish into very small pieces, close to paste form, and washing it repeatedly with water. Read More

New Major Faults Found Near Japan Coast

Two active and sizable faults were discovered east of Tokyo, a bit more than 100 km off the coast of Chiba Prefecture, measuring 160 km(99miles) and 300 km(186miles) long respectively.

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Much A-Blue About Strawberries, Hypothetical Question Gets Everyone in a Tizzy

About 30 years ago, the late great George Carlin asked the famous question; “Where’s the blue food?”  In this routine he’s quick to point out that many foods with “blue” in the name aren’t really blue.  Blueberries are so dark they barely register as blue.  Blue cheese is just white cheese with blue mold in it.  And if anyone on the internet refers you to a “blue waffle” please forget you read it and move on with your life.

This culinary curiosity appears to have everyone mystified as proved by the recent landslide of attention that has befallen a website called strawberryblu.com.  A cute little article attempting to answer the question “Do blue strawberries exist?” which was written about a year ago has just recently been a magnet of attention in the middle of a fierce debate over genetically modified food.

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The End of Barcodes? Toshiba Unveils Register Scanners that Can See Rather than Scan

I remember on my first day of computer programming class the first thing the teacher said was, “Computers are stupid.”  It was a valuable fact that has served me well in my relationships with these ubiquitous machines.

For instance, if I show a four year old a can of Coke, they can quickly tell me what it is. Whereas for a computer, we have to print a series of lines and numbers on it just so the dumbass box can get up to speed.

It makes you wonder why we have to go through all the trouble of making up barcodes just so a machine can understand what you and I plainly see.  It’s enough to make you think the barcode industry is some sort of insidious freemason plot.  Recently, though, Toshiba has announced a scanner for supermarkets and other shops that will bring this evil syndicate of barcode charlatans to their knees.

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