TOKYOMANGO

Sharp Announces New Technology That Fights Bird Flu

Sharp Electronics teamed up with London University biologist John Oxford to create a new revolutionary defense against bird flu, also known as virus H5N1. By releasing positive and negative ions simultaneously, the technology causes virus cells to instantly combine on the surface and become free radicals, essentially replicating the properties of fresh air. It disables microorganisms that yield pollution or airborne disesase.

Plastmacluster itself was developed in 2000 as an air purification method, and is used in Sharp air conditioners and air purifiers. This summer was the first time it was proven to fight the spread of bird flu. It successfully removed 99% of the bird flu virus in lab tests.

Link (Japanese)

Researchers Find Possible Cure for PTSD

Researchers in Gunma think they've found a protein that cures PTSD. When tested on mice, the protein ICER was able to block past experiences from inducing fear memory.

To test their theory, the scientists took three mice—one with no ICER, one with lots of ICER, and one normal mouse—and gave them electric shocks after an ominous buzzer sound. The next day, when they sounded the buzzer again, the mouse without ICER reacted much more slowly than the other two. The one who had lots of ICER freaked out much earlier than the rest. We'll see if this leads to anything useful to humans. The research will be published in the US soon.

Link

US Monkey Controls Japanese Robot With Brain Waves

When a group of human scientists can make a monkey in North Carolina maneuver a robot in Tokyo using neurological signals, you know you've arrived at a benchmark in technological advancement.

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I Got My Brain Scrambled for a Wired Story

My latest story on Wired.com is about my experience as a neuroscience guinea pig at a lab in San Francisco:

I feel like the hoodlum Alex in Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange: My head is held steady by a chin strap, while two technicians grease my scalp with conductive gel and slip on a cap bristling with electrodes.

I'm about to have my brain scrambled -- electrically -- in the name of medical science. Scientists are going to knock out regions of my brain while I perform a memory test.

Read the story

New Automated Forensic Method Speeds Up Victim Identification

Radiologists in Japan have just discovered a new automated dental radiograph matching system that improves and speeds up forensic identification. Up until now, forensic identification has been a slow and often inaccurate process that relied on the human eye. By using a technique called Phase-Only Correlation that corrects distortions caused by damage and compares images closer than ever before, the researchers were able to correctly identify dental patients within seconds—that's literally just 95% of the time it would have taken the old school way.

The researchers think they'll start using this method by next year.

Link

Woman Wins Prize for Creating Vanilla Flavored Poo

This is Mayu Yamamoto. She is a Japanese woman who recently won an international award for extracting a flavor eerily similar to vanilla from cow poo.

The Japanese are no strangers to the Ig Nobel Prize. Dr. NakaMats, our favorite inventor, won it in 2005 for documenting 35 years worth of meals, and 10 others have also won the silly science award, which is handed out by categories every year by the Harvard-based Annals of Improbable Research.

What an exciting week for Japan! Not only did we land a probe on the moon, but we figured out how to make poo taste good! Very, very important stuff.

Link

Japanese Robots Arrive On The Moon

Exciting day for JAXA! Japanese robots arrived on the moon for the first time today. Like most vehicles that make great voyages, the lunar probe has a woman's name—Selene—short for Selenological Engineering Explorer. It was launched on September 14, four years behind schedule, but safely arrived at its destination, where it will hang out for a year investigating the evolution of the moon. It's the largest lunar mission since Apollo.

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Miniscule Toilet Taken With Electron Microscope

Do you really need more proof that Japanese people love toilet jokes? This photograph, taken by nanotechnologist Kaito Takahashi, won the Most Bizzare Award at a conference on electrons, ions, and photo beam technology a couple years ago. He took it using an electron microscope at 15,000x magnification while working at a lab in Shizuoka. And even though it's actually a photo of an integrated circuit, he decided to call it "Small Toilet."

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JAXA's Recyclable Unmanned Spacecraft

JAXA, Japan's space exploration agency, is preparing to launch the first test of its reusable unmanned spacecraft in November. Pictured here is the prototype, which is 1/5 of the actual size. It's designed to be lightweight and self-lifting, and comes to fruition after two years of research.

Link (Japanese)

New Cancer Tech Based On Dog's Nose

Japan's greatest new cancer detector is this 5 year old black lab named Marine. Marine can distinguish up to 18 different types of cancer just from sniffing a human's breath, but there's more: this year, Japanese biomimetics company Seems Inc. is coming out with a portable, cell-phone-sized sensor that mechanically replicates this dog's olfactory skills. The device is slated to come out within six months and will be sold for under 10,000 yen. Now that's pretty affordable and awesome.

via the Japan Times (Thanks, Mary!)