Japan has one of the highest installed renewable energy capacities in the world. The country is also one of the world’s largest consumers of energy. Lacking its own fossil fuel resources, it relies on imports for nearly all of its supply. This dependence on imports makes the country vulnerable to …
CLEAN UP TIME: Pollutec Operations, Australia, has come up with a technology to extract litter and other solid debris from urban stormwater drains. The process, known as Continuous Deflective Separation, is likely to prove a boon for cities since it removes virtually all water-borne polluting solids such as packaging materials, …
How does the idea of silk-coats leather sound? Scientists at tic National Institute of Sericultural and Entomological Science Japan are working to realise the ideT with the help of Indem,*3 Petrochemical Co Ltd Silk, now only made into yarn fibip has been crushed to powder forzT for coating various mate …
THERE may finally be an answer to disposing off the scourge of environment: plastics. Researchers at the National institute of Bioscience and Human Technology in Japan have homed in on wro bacteria that decompose polyvinyl allcohol (PvA) and polylactic acid. PvA is used in textile mills largely to prevent fibres …
With tastes for organically pro duced food growing by the day, increasing number of Japan farmers swear by organic metho of cultivation. Roughly 3 to 5 n lion people throughout Japan, larly eat organic produce claim that it tastes better. Organic pro cers, have succeeded in obtain yields that are …
AFTER 8 months had passed since the Great Hanshin Earthquake struck Kobe in western Japan, all damaged rail lines have been restored, most of the collapsed buildings have been removed, and reconstruction has begun. However, as of mid-August, some 7,600 residents who lost their homes, still continue to live in …
WITH the production of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) coming to a slow stop as a consequence of the Montreal Protocol of 1987, efforts are now directed towards its disposal. Large amounts of this ozone depleting chemical are being collected from aerosols, insulation foams and cooling units for its final denouement. Breaking down …
THOUSANDS of people living in the Nigata, Kumamoto and Kagoshima pre- fectures in Japan had contracted the Minamata disease (first detected in the early 1950'5) -a form of organic mer- cury poisoning -when 2 frontrunning chemical companies, Chisso Corp and Showa Denko KK discharged their cont- aminated waste in the …
JAPAN has gone ahead and done what-it has been planning to do for 'more than a year now. On August 29, its first proto- type fast-breeder reactor - Monju - started generating power. Monju is the key reactor of the nation's nuclear recycling programme, informs the semi -governmental Power Reactor …
Hokkaido University researchers in Japan are investigating a 'smart' material that could be useful in bio-medical applications. Hydrogels -a cross-linked polymer network filled with water molecules -can show 'shape memory'. The gel which can be deformed at low temperatures, can revert to its original shape when heated above 50
Japan's decision to impose anti-dumping duties of upto 9.9 per cent on cotton yarn imports from Pakistan has enraged Pakistan's cotton-exporting lobby. The decision followed an investigation that revealed that Pakistani cotton was being sold in Japan at between 2.1 per cent and 9.9 per cent below the prices back …
Japan-based Fujitsu Ltd has developed the world's smallest magneto- optical, (MO) disc drive for use in laptop and computer notebooks. The drive, 140 by 101.6 mm and 17 min thick, weighs less than 300 grams, It has been developed for integration into portable computers, potentially replacing standard floppy disc drives. …
IF THE French go ahead with their plans to ensure nuclear tests, the Japanese will have nothing to do with them. Forty eight legislators have joined forces with Citizens for Peace - a non- parliamentary group - to issue a joint statement urging the government to recall Japan's ambassador to …
Japanese researchers have designed an electronic secretary - a computer that can recognise and talk with its owner and perform duties such as taking messages. The ministry of international trade and industry has unveiled the system - consisting of a PC, a combined camera and a microphone which is programmed …
THIS is possible only in Japan, perhaps. Some sage wrote scriptures on a piece of paper in 1247. And 487 years later, the same paper was used by a scholar for taking down notes. If you don't believe this, see it for yourself in the Paper Museum in Tokyo. Japan …
JAPAN must get its act together on the energy front, says the International Energy Agency (iea). In a news conference organised in Tokyo in mid-June, Robert Priddle, director of the iea warned that unless the Japanese government made serious efforts to ease restrictions on the energy industry -- for better …
National budget constraints have forced leading donor nations like the us to cut assistance to developing countries down to almost 20 per cent in 1993-94. But Japan, the world's largest donor, has not followed suit. It has retained its overseas development assistance (oda) budget of us $11.3 billion, 1/5th of …
Japan's health care system is the envy of the world. The average Japanese male expects to live 75.9 years, while women can live upto a ripe 81.8 years. But this success has helped create the fastest growing greying population in the industrialised world, shooting national medical costs through the roof. …
THE Japanese government is furious with China for going ahead with its underground nuclear test, making a complete farce out of the recently-concluded Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) conference held in New York. At the conference, the non-nuclear states had agreed to an indefinite extension of the treaty only on the condition …
IN Tins age of information, telecommunications is evolving at a breakneck pace. While a few years ago, even movie channel through a TV cable was something of a novelty, the technological pundits are today close to realising their vision of sending 500 cable channels into each home, simultaneously. Though this …
The laying out of a golf course on Japan's Amami-Oshama island - the 2nd one there - may push the Amami black hare, the oldest species of hare in the world, to the brink of extinction. Environmental Network Amami, a local NGO, has thus made them coplaintiffs in the suit …
